Linux Wall Warts Small On Size, Big On Possibilities

davidmwilliams writes "Every geek and technology lover will undoubtedly have stumbled across online adverts for tiny headless Linux-powered devices that are barely larger than the power point they plug into. What can you actually do with them? Plenty, it seems!"

Comments

oh man

[Pojut]

Firewalls, Torrent Slaves, Front end for a "remote desktop" style connection, small traveling computer for a hotel that has a flat screen, etc.

Re:oh man

[Kepesk]

I'd like to see one with MythTV built into it. Plug it into the wall, give it a coax cable in, HDMI and USB out for monitor and keyboard, and off you go. Take your DVR anywhere.

Sure, the technology isn't quite there to do that cheaply, but it certainly wouldn't be expensive currently to build one that just connects to a wireless network and outputs Hulu.

Re:oh man

[bill_mcgonigle]

Torrent Slaves

I wonder ... if somebody made an image with a self-registering Tor relay* that looked at the TCP congestion control state and throttled dynamically ... and then people started dropping $100 on these and plugging them in to random office buildings where a free data jack and power outlet were available - how many of them would still be operating after a couple years?

* I know you said 'torrent slave', but it gave me the idea

Re:oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

And I wonder, if you went into random office buildings and plugged some of these in, programmed to connect out to your master server (through their NAT, etc) sniff traffic, scour the local intranet and file shares and generally do some spying and acting as a jump point for your hacking, how many of them would still be operating after a couple years?

* I know you said 'tor relay', but it gave me the idea

Re:oh man

[commodore64_love]

>>>Torrent Slaves

Ooops read my mind! It would save a lot of money to have a 5 watt Torrent-downloading plug to download my favorite TV shows,* versus leaving my ~150 watt computer running all the time. Some quick math: 0.140 kilowatt * 24 * 365 * 12 cents per KWh == about 140 dollars saved.

Okay maybe not a lot of money. In fact: Never mind. I'll just use my laptop to save electricity. ;-)

*
* Trivia - 5 watt is the US-enforced maximum wattage allowed on Digital TV converter boxes.

Re:oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

I've actually done this with VDR instead of mythtv, my mother can now watch tv on her laptop via wifi, I had to wait 23 years, but she loves me now!

Re:oh man

[tepples]

Plug it into the wall, give it a coax cable in

And get only local channels. Everything else needs a CableCARD.

Re:oh man

[cynyr]

places have ports enabled that are not is use/conspicuous?

Re:oh man

[drsmithy]

Firewalls, Torrent Slaves, Front end for a "remote desktop" style connection, small traveling computer for a hotel that has a flat screen, etc.

Firewalling with only a single NIC is difficult when most consumer level switches don't support vlan tagging.
You're not going to be torrenting much with that little computing power and especially that little storage.
Not sure what a "remote desktop" style connection is that can't be done just as easily with a port forward or something like TeamViewer.
"Travelling computer" ? Isn't that what a laptop is ?

These things are kinda cool, in a geeky way, but I don't see what they achieve that can't be done _much_ better with a cheap PC and/or VMs.

Re:oh man

[bill_mcgonigle]

places have ports enabled that are not is use/conspicuous?

You might need to put a Polycom sticker on it.

Re:oh man

[cayenne8]

"And get only local channels. Everything else needs a CableCARD."

Well...I can scan the cable, and find all the local channels on HD. But for analog, I still get all of the expanded basic channels...and I've heard tale, that some people can do this with only paying for a cable internet connection, and just tap in and get all these 'free' tv channels.

So, you get local programming this way...and for special shows, well, that's what DVD's are for, and I've also heard tale that many things like this can be downloaded on the internet.

I don't pay for a settop box, or a cable card, but I find that I have all the TV I would ever like to watch...and I'm quite the TV junkie. At my place at least 2-3 tvs are on when I'm there, and the last one turns off with a timer when I fall asleep. I use that as my nightlight.

Re:oh man

[Alamais]

Not for long. As predicted, the Cablecos have already started nixing analog 'expanded basic'. As soon as the OTA digital switch was over (and thus their opportunity to claim that "you won't need to switch anything with cable!!!!!!"), they start dropping analog asap. My mom just switched to satellite, since now the only thing she could pick up from Comcast on her (old, non-HD) tv was local channels, and the cost to upgrade to digital made satellite a much better deal.

Re:oh man

[publiclurker]

Put a sticker on it saying something like "To be moved by IT only!!", or "Alarm System Access Point #7". Most of them will be left alone.

Re:oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

then people started dropping $100 on these and plugging them in to random office buildings where a free data jack and power outlet were available - how many of them would still be operating after a couple years?

None of them would still be in operation by the time you got out of federal jail.

Re:oh man

[JWSmythe]

Don't forget your fingerprints on the box, both the virtual ones (like coding practices, notes, and hostnames) and real ones like physical fingerprints on the outside of the box.

    You may have a hard time sniffing for traffic on a good switched network. All you may see is broadcast traffic. If you can gain access to the switch itself, you could set up a monitor port and listen to various things. Open file shares are a bit obvious, but not always useful if they have anything resembling security practices (i.e., password protected shares). A bit of brute force may work wonders, even with just a dictionary file.

    It could result in a waste of a little spy box, or a goldmine for stolen data. Of course, if you use the stolen data, it may (and likely will) come back to haunt you. Best case, you'll end up in civil court. Worse case would be you end up in criminal court with a serious conviction, jail time, and more fines than you'll ever be able to pay. Worst case, you stole from the wrong folks, and your mutilated body is found years later. The coroner's report may read something like "The victim died peacefully, after all his minor extremities were removed with common hand tools, every rib was broken through blunt force trauma, skull fractures were caused by what appeared to be a baseball bat, and then he drowned while wearing cement shoes."

    Hacking is all fun and games, until you end up dead. Those are the cases we rarely hear about, but I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss them as impossible.

Re:oh man

[SQLGuru]

That $140 saved is enough to pay for itself in 1 year. And that lets you keep your laptop as a laptop.

Re:oh man

[cayenne8]

"Not for long. As predicted, the Cablecos have already started nixing analog 'expanded basic'."

Comcast is the only one I've heard of doing this. Cox isn't so far.

Any others you know of that are doing this?

Re:oh man

[no1home]

Unless you're on Charter- They seem to hate CableCards. I have a TiVo HD that requires a cable card (no way for it to control a set top box- supposedly) and Charter, which is a nasty cable provider anyway, has really SUCKED in this department. I'm constantly having to reboot, being told by TiVo that I have a new device plugged in (which is an external device required so that the cable cards can work with Charter's system- so a set top box of a different sort). That device, the cable cards, the cabling have all been tested, replaced, retested, ad infinitum, with no help. The TiVo works great, except for the cable stuff, then it's hit-n-miss. Most of the techs have said all the equipment is solid. But then, most of them have been idiots. And the main tech office the techs call for support is just as bad. Many of the issues have verifiably been due to billing codes being input wrong. Of course, it's not all about the cable cards. My roomies have regular digital set top boxes that fail at the same time as mine, but not every time mine does.

So no, if you're on Charter, avoid cable cards. Or do what I plan on doing- move! Anybody in Verizon FIOS territory have a nice room to let?

Re:oh man

[TooMuchToDo]

Portable, secure Workspace.

*Homer Simpson Voice* Patent pending!

Re:oh man

[TooMuchToDo]

My favorite I once saw was "Process Controller. Touching this will break manufacturing line." And this was *not* at a small scale manufacturing plant.

/Ended up being a logging server.
//Someone had a sense of humor

Re:oh man

[SethJohnson]

I know you're probably aware of this solution, but I'll throw it out there anyway. Several vendors are selling low-power set-top boxes that support torrent downloads to attached or internal media. These run linux and can also deliver 1080p media to your TV from a wide array of file formats.

I recently purchased the Patriot Box Office for $65 (with rebate) off NewEgg's site. It's not without it's problems, but it performs most of its responsibilities reliably. It also works as a NAS, though without many permissions options.

I'd get three more of these before I'd waste any money on a walwart linux box. These settop boxes are just as hackable, plus they have hardware video chipsets.

Re:oh man

[TheHedonismBot]

Sorry to hear that, but glad I'm not the only one. I've been having these EXACT same issues with my TiVo HD and Charter. We've had horrible to non existent service, many pointless calls to tech support and a multitude of techs coming out to tell is everything is just "fine", when it obviously hasn't been. It would be nice if there were some true competition in the marketplace, so that I could just use another cable company. There's no Verizon FIOS or ATT U-Verse service at my address, so my choice is charter or satellite.

Re:oh man

[timeOday]

In the era of high-def digital TV, you need a pretty beefy processor and GPU for video decoding (let alone transcoding). Last I checked, even atom-based systems with integrated graphics cannot manage, unless you get hardware accelerated replay working (which is iffy at best given poor linux support and the huge variety of codecs). Then there's web-based video - I have an 800 mhz celeron which cannot play youtube even at 320p (even with DRI working - if that makes any difference). Rescaling Hulu's flash player to 1080 lines for display on a TV is hugely cpu intensive.

Actually, it was very eye opening to run my old 800 mhz celeron on the Internet at all - even with fvwm instead of gnome, and even with the flashblock plugin, firefox is painfully slow. All the complex formatting of today's 1mb homepages really seems to take its toll. OpenOffice isn't exactly vi either. So I wouldn't be quick to assume these wall wart computers will do anything for the average user's normal desktop use.

Re:oh man

[hansamurai]

This is what I use my Sheeva Plug for, watches RSS feeds and downloads automatically, also acts as the NAS for the house. Great stuff, really simple to configure being Debian and all.

Re:oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked at one place that was so paranoid about things breaking that if you left it unlabeled it would have never been touched. No one would be able to figure out what it was intended for (of course) and no one would have been willing to take the blame for whatever it was that broke when it was removed. That place was a ball of twine, held together with gum and duct tape, built up by various people over the years with exactly zero budget, so what can you expect?

Re:oh man

[JSG]

What's a "cable" 8)

I can't get one of those things, I just have to put up with Freeview and Freesat - around 150 odd channels. Mind you there are 15 regional varieties of BBC 1.

I'll want a F plug and coax connection on mine. Preferably two of each to compete with my existing MythTV setup, sitting on top of KDE with all the 3D frippary..

Perhaps I wont bother unless they can fit my Asterisk PBX, router, BIND, DHCPD, Exim, Courier IMAPD etc in it as well.

#emerge -e @world might take a while on it.

Re:oh man

[cayenne8]

"I can't get one of those things, I just have to put up with Freeview and Freesat - around 150 odd channels"

Are these the Free To Air boxes I've heard of, that you can hack into to receive *ahem* other signals with?

Re:oh man

[Eunuchswear]

You're not going to be torrenting much with that little computing power

Torrents take mucho CPU power? Tell that to my plugf.

and especially that little storage.

Oh, USB connected disks don't exist in your universe?

Re:oh man

[Eunuchswear]

Firewalling with only a single NIC is difficult when most consumer level switches don't support vlan tagging.

And your customer ADSL connection is so fast that a USB2 ethernet connection would be an unacceptable slowdown.

Re:oh man

[drsmithy]

Oh, USB connected disks don't exist in your universe?

Sure, but using one basically defeats the purpose of this device, since now you have additional cabling to connect to your drive, probably another power supply for the drive plus more power draw fpr the drive. You may as well just buy a small atom-based "server" and have a single box with dramatically more capability and a lot less screwing around.

Re:oh man

[Fumbili]

Fire Unit Control Kit

Re:oh man

[mattack2]

You're talking about the Tuning Adapter, which is for SDV channels.. NOT the CableCards.

I'm not claiming this actually solves your problem -- it doesn't. But your issue is with the Tuning Adapters, not the cablecards. If you ran your system with JUST the CableCards (which I believe would require rerunning Guided Setup, and obviously you would be doing without the SDV channels), you would likely have a FAR better situation.

You should be complaining to the company about the Tuning Adapter performance.

(BTW, I was an analog-only person for a VERY long time, even after I got my S3 & TivoHD [during periods when lifetime subscriptions were not generally available].. I still wish I could optionally record some channels in analog to take up less disk space... But even saying that, my experience with CableCards has been mostly positive, though I had to add my own amplifier since we had too many splits already.)

Re:oh man

[bill_mcgonigle]

So, which part of the UK are you from?

Re:oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

Mickey, is that you?

Re:oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

We keep telling you people no, don't try to run MythTV on these kinds of things, but you never listen. The database requires a lot of power. The guide processor requires a lot of power. The scheduler requires a lot of power. The commercial detection requires a lot of power. Decoding requires a lot of power. The UI requires a lot of power.

You can run it, but it's not going to be a pleasurable experience. Buy yourself some real hardware. Spend the extra $20/yr it costs in power and be happy. Christ, the thing doesn't even have a floating point unit. What kind of piece of crap computer can't do floating point?

Re:oh man

[damium]

We are planning on using a few for remote UPS monitors. Sure we could buy a UPS with SNMP but these are both cheaper ($300-600 for most SNMP add-on cards) and offer more flexibility.

Re:oh man

[Blymie]

"In US usage, especially colloquial, of is often omitted, as in "I went there a couple times"."

"Especially colloquial", indeed. From where I sit, this highlights why Wiktionary has failed me at every use. Using this "dictionary" to defend the dropping of "of", is the same as using "Ain't" all over the place, because Wiktionary claims "However, its use is common among all social classes".

Common among all social classes, my ass. Yes, you see the Trumps (or the people they call peers), using ain't regularly.

This dictionary is a FAILURE. It will always be a failure, because most of the people editing it, are not capable of proper english usage!

(and yes, I left "english" lower case on purpose..)

Re:oh man

[PinkyGigglebrain]

In the US you could put something along the lines of;

"Under Authority granted by the PATRIOT Act this device is not to tampered with or moved under any circumstances. Nor can its existence be discussed with anyone not authorized under the aforementioned act. Failure to follow this directive will result in prosecution for violation of Federal Statues and endangering National Security."

Throw in some references to the sections of the PATRIOT act that covers National Security Letters, covert surveillance and whatever else you can to get the point across that if they even so much as look at the hardware funny they could end up in big trouble.

Someone would put a filing cabinet in front of it it would be "forgotten" by everyone around.

Hell, it might be fun to do that with just a big plain AC/DC wall wart.

Re:oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

You may have a hard time sniffing for traffic on a good switched network.

Yes and no. You don't necessarily need to sniff every packet on the network.

If the switches have reasonable physical security and the the only available network access points you can find already have workstations attached to them you mostly are stuck with being the man in the middle (arguably that's where you want to be anyway). You can't unplug the workstation that will just draw attention when the user has to call IT. So, you insert yourself between the switch and the workstation. Yes, it's only sniffing one workstation's traffic but that could be enough.

At any rate you'll be behind the company firewall and chances are the idiots in IT won't be smart enough to set up, use, and maintain an IDS correctly. Most IT departments are stretched just maintaining users, firewalls (one way firewalls at that), spam and malware controls, and whatever fucked up update process they have.

Re:oh man

[selven]

Define "proper english usage". Seriously, there is no government, corporation or anything else that I know of that even claims to control the English language, so "correct" usage is defined by the native speakers themselves.

Re:oh man

[Neil Boekend]

I'll want a F plug and coax connection on mine.

Why? I assume you mean an IEC 169-2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_169-2) by coax.
This would be a pointless wasting of space. It seems you'd like to use cable TV (upto about 950 MHz) and sat (1GHz to 2 GHz) on one device, with connectors for each. Both cables are 75 Ohms. The F connector is simply usable up to higher frequencies. There are conversion connectors to switch between them. There even are combiners to combine a TV signal and a satellite signal on one cable. I even saw an LNB with an IEC 169-2 input, so it combined the signals in the LNB itself (I wouldn't trust an IEC to the weather though).

What I mean to say is: You don't need both. Only the F connector. If you'd want to use only the TV signal, simply convert it. For the sat signal: it should use F already. For both: combine them.

Now that I would like to see is an Ethernet Over Power connection. Simply plug it into the wall. Let it connect to an already available EOP network and have fun. I heard someone say something like "A PC needs only a power outlet and a network cable to be useful" Why not remove half of those connections, to make it even more foolproof?

Re:oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you're inside a typical company network its game over... 99% of places have a decently firewalled external interface, but are wide open inside. Your box would just need to tunnel outside (or provide a wireless access point you could use while sitting on the street outside) and you could waltz in and compromise everything.

Let's say theres 100 windows machines consisting of general workstations and a handful of servers, chances are at least one will be missing a critical patch or have some other exploitable vulnerability, once on a single host with SYSTEM if its part of an active directory domain its relatively easy to get domain admin and from there you can find out where the admin workstations are and begin keylogging them to get access to anything which doesn't use active directory for auth.

Also, assuming your 100 windows machines have windows update turned on or are using wsus internally, and all machines believe they are fully up to date... try checking the versions of the individual exe/dll files associated with the various security updates (or use something which automated the process like nessus), you will find that a small handful of those machines will be missing various updates despite windows update thinking they're installed.

Re:oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Your post is full of excessive quotation marks and commas.

Re:oh man

[SeaFox]

My cableco sends out most "regular" cable channels and quite a few HD stations in ClearQAM.

Re:oh man

[Patch86]

In the UK, we have "Freeview"- basically about 50 digital channels through your normal aerial (and so through regular coax). GPs suggestion would be nice for that. Plus obviously internet video (iPlayer, YouTube) and streaming from your personal collection.

Re:oh man

[tepples]

In the UK, we have "Freeview"- basically about 50 digital channels through your normal aerial (and so through regular coax).

In the US, home of Slashdot, digital OTA TV has about one-fifth of that if the viewer is lucky.

Re:oh man

[zoward]

We have an HD TiVo, and a cable card. Charter recently informed us that without a cable box, we'd start losing the ability to view an increasing number of channels unless they installed a tuning adapter card. To make a long story short, they installed the card, and we now have to reboot every few days, we get error messages galore from the TiVo box about the adapter card, channels drop out and return randomly, etc.

I'd be tempted to buy (or build) a media box, and drop the cable part of my cable/internet service, but my wife informed me that would be grounds for divorce (she absolutely LOVES the TiVo).

Re:oh man

[bziman]

proper english usage

While studying linguistics at the university level, I came across this quaint notion of "descriptive" vs "prescriptive" linguistics. The point was that the idea of "prescribing" a fixed set of rules for language is completely archaic, and that, like it or not, language is continuously evolving, and the best thing to do is to try to understand why and how it evolves. A useful dictionary should be updated to contain new forms and vocabulary, so that when you see something you don't understand, you can go look it up.

If you disagree, then perhaps you'd prefer to speak Middle English? Or Old English? Or Proto-Indo-European?

Re:oh man

[Spugglefink]

Not for long. As predicted, the Cablecos have already started nixing analog 'expanded basic'. As soon as the OTA digital switch was over (and thus their opportunity to claim that "you won't need to switch anything with cable!!!!!!"), they start dropping analog asap.

Yep. When I finally caved in to get a set top box, the line at Comcast wrapped halfway around the building with people showing up to get set top boxes. At $10 a month rental for the stupid piece of crap (and it's supposedly not possible to just buy one straight up), Comcast says "$$$Cha-ching$$$"

They're also hugely inconsistent about their pricing. Online says one thing, sales staff in India say something else, and then the local people at the office say yet a third entirely different thing. How big is the bill going to be? Nobody can figure it out for sure ahead of time, but you can bet it will be a lot bigger than what you thought you were signing up for.

Three cheers for Comcast!

Re:oh man

[Thinboy00]

Actually, the FCC finally figured out that CableCARD is a fail. They're working on a replacement.

Re:oh man

[mattack2]

You're still misunderstanding. The Tuning Adapter IS NOT A CARD, it is a separate box.

There are Cable Cards, which plug directly into the Tivo's card slot(s) and allow tuning of protected QAM channels.

There is a Tuning Adapter, which is a separate box, which talks "upstream" and allows you to tune SDV channels, because SDV channels "move around" more than regular QAM channels, and this "moving around" isn't how regular QAM (cable) channels work. (Pedants: I know QAM channels can/do move around, but in a different way. I'm simplifying.)

Your problems, AND THEY ARE VALID COMPLAINTS, are with the Tuning Adapter, NOT with the Cable Cards.

Re:oh man

[Skal Tura]

Get the model with HDMI out, and use USB dongle for receiving. :) So it exists already :)

Re:oh man

[Skal Tura]

Except atom boxes cost a lot more, consume a lot more electricity and are way larger, plus you can use an USB HDD jus like an internal SATA/IDE HDD under Linux.

With a WD Caviar an plug would would consume around 18W max, while the ATOM will use something like 55-70W and even at minimum around 40W. And higher consumption translates to more heat so it's harder to hide out of view aswell.

Oh and plugs come with debian preinstalled nowadays, configured to use DHCP.

Re:oh man

[Blymie]

Define "proper english usage". Seriously, there is no government, corporation or anything else that I know of that even claims to control the English language, so "correct" usage is defined by the native speakers themselves.

I do not see how this disputes what I said above. I did not state that correct english language usage was not defined by those that natively speak the language. Why would you think I did? What we are talking about, is who will compile a 'report' of that language, in the form of dictionaries and other guides (grammar usage, etc).. and provide it for public consumption. It takes *years* to master a language like english. Many users never will. Many of the words are not used by 99.99% of the population, but by those in specialized circumstance. Words specific to certain industries, or climates. Words specific to certain circumstances. "Fluff" words, that are used by certain classes, or regions. Are we going to compile dictionaries for each class? Should we create a high and low english? Should we have dictionaries for the 100s of varying dialects of english, within a country? Dialects created by region, by culture, and yes -- even dialects created by your crèche, and your family? We need 'one' english defined, so we can all at least agree on the non-colloquial terms for words. Your argument seems to be that 'the average joe' should compile references for the language. However, much of the population is not literate. The UN's requirements for literacy are a joke. While there are claims of 99% literacy in the US and Canada, this is a joke. Many of that 99/100, are people that can barely read a newspaper. They are lucky to read STOP signs. Are these barely literate people engaged in compiling this wiki dictionary too? If not, why not? They have definitions for the words used in the dictionary, too! They use the language every day! They speak it as well, so why are they not working on this wiki as well? Traditional dictionaries actually spend money, and travel the country to discover new forms of usage, new words, and the like. These dictionaries even compile definitions from people that can not read and write! From people that are barely literate! Again, how are these people represented in this wiki dictionary?

Two Words

[0racle]

Hidden Cameras.

Re:Two Words

[grub]

If they can run via Power Over Ethernet, I'd be a happy camper. Just hang them off a POE switch and you're online.

.

Re:Two Words

[Nikker]

Actually powerline Ethernet would be even slicker since most homes don't have a POE switch and cabling as it is.

Re:Two Words

[mirix]

I can't see hacking that being too big of a deal, then again I guess that's my trade.

Most folks don't have a POE switch, though, so I can't see a factory POE one hitting as low of prices, unless they get picked up by industry, just because of numbers.

Got me curious now, might have to pick one up.

Re:Two Words

[badboy_tw2002]

Most homes have wireless these days so its surprising this doesn't as well.

Re:Two Words

[Eunuchswear]

Most homes have wireless these days so its surprising this doesn't as well.

Power over wireless? Hello Nikola!

Re:Two Words

[MichaelSmith]

Most homes have wireless these days so its surprising this doesn't as well.

Power over wireless? Hello Nikola!

I get wireless power from the sun.

Re:Two Words

[PinkyGigglebrain]

Combine with motion (details at the bottom of the page) and an Internet connection.

Endless possibilities.

3 pages?

[RevRagnarok]

Did it really need 3 pages? Nope.

Wall warts?

[joeflies]

Not a particularly attractive name overall, but I decided to search the web to see if it's in common usage. Turns out that it's only used in reference to AC adapters, not as all-in-one computers. In fact, the first reference to the term as it relates to a mini computer is this very article. So it looks like they're making up their own lingo.

Re:Wall warts?

[Maarx]

Everything is wrong about this article. I love /. and Linux as much as the next guy, but this article starts out defining it's own terminology, then reads like an advertisement for SheevaPlug, and then wraps up with... not much.

I hate to be this guy, but I don't understand why this is on /.

Re:Wall warts?

[Mitchell314]

For those of us who haven't heard of wall warts? Or to use more professional and socially accepted terminology, fuggin tiny computers. :P

Re:Wall warts?

[SnarfQuest]

these devices are the same size and shape as many of the transformers used to power such things as laptops and video games. If you didn't know they were a complete computer, you'd be looking for the device that it was powering. The only difference you can see is that instead of a power cable going to some device, you have a network cable going into a router.

Since they look like a "wall wart", it isn't that surprising that they get called by the same name. These things are SMALL.

Re:Wall warts?

[iceperson]

My google-fu > than yours apparently...
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=linux+wall+wart

Re:Wall warts?

[Monkey-Man2000]

Wall warts are just any unattractive thing that takes up space on you power outlets (ala warts). Big AC adapters are the usual, but I think these will fit the bill if they hang off the wall.

Re:Wall warts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally I've see people use "wall-wart" to refer to anything that plugs into an outlet and is large enough to cover multiple outlets. So that includes AC adapters, large ethernet-over-home-power adapters, plug computers, etc.

Re:Wall warts?

[westlake]

Not a particularly attractive name overall, but I decided to search the web to see if it's in common usage

The wall wart conjures up something that is hot, bulky, won't fit on my UPS or power strip - or takes up a socket I need for something else.

Re:Wall warts?

[Ethanol-fueled]

Musicians(well, electric instrumentalists) know the term from the AC adapters used to power their effects pedals.

Re:Wall warts?

[hellop2]

This has been covered on slashdot before. 1.5 years ago.

$100 Linux Wall-Wart Now Available

+4 Informative? More like Uninformative.

Re:Wall warts?

[bziman]

"Wall wart" refers to the plastic box containing a transformer that plugs into the wall a produces a low voltage DC output on a cord that plugs into a device. The usage here is as a form factor -- where the whole computer fits in a plastic box that plugs directly into the wall. I've been following plug computers for a long time, and the ones that are shaped like that often refer to the form factor as "computer in a wall wart".

Re:Wall warts?

[Skal Tura]

actually wall wart term for these has been used since the first release of sheevaplug or earlier.
try "wall wart computing" as search term. another is Plug computing.

They are not making their own lingo, but as wall wart AC adapters are way more widely used than wall wart mini computers .... You can guess the rest :)

No wireless?

[slaxative]

After reading the article I am rather surprised there is no wireless interface. They could have saved one more cable.

Re:No wireless?

[Andy Dodd]

It does have WiFi, but some people want to use it as a wireless gateway/AP/provide more throughput than WiFi can provide.

Re:No wireless?

[slaxative]

No, it does not. Check out the spec sheet. http://www.plugcomputer.org/data/docs/ionics_plug_computer_info_sheet.pdf

Re:No wireless?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ionics plug does not, but the Guruplug does, both as an AP and as an endpoint. Bluetooth, as well.

Re:No wireless?

[Gnaget]

I would have been happy if it used ethernet over power. The GuruPlug has WiFi built is, but it is only given an aside mention in the last page of the article. A shame too, because at the same price it has much better hardware.

Re:No wireless?

[Johnny O]

I own one and am typing this on my android connected via wifi to the GuruPlug that is my access point at home. It has bluetooth also so I can connect to my Tomtom's linux console too!

Re:No wireless?

[Anonymous Coward]

The GuruPlug has wireless.

Re:No wireless?

[Andy Dodd]

From one of the links in the article:

http://www.newit.co.uk/shop/products.php?cat=11

Looks like they have WiFi.

What, SheevaPlugs again?

[IICV]

Isn't this like the billionth Slashvertizement for SheevaPlugs? They're neat and all, but I think at this point everyone here knows about those things. I'll probably get one if I can ever think of a use for it.

Re:What, SheevaPlugs again?

[mbakunin]

I'm waiting for the price to hit $50. $70 isn't bad, though. Maybe I should bite the proverbial bullet.

Re:What, SheevaPlugs again?

[Anonymous Coward]

In an alternate universe where SheevaPlugs are 50$, bizarro-mbakunin posts on bizarro-slashdot...

mbakunin (258573)
I'm waiting for the price to hit $35. $50 isn't bad, though.

Re:What, SheevaPlugs again?

[CdBee]

Prior commenters on an earlier discussion suggested that a sheevaplug is best used as a room heater as they have a surprising capacity for overheating. Who'd have thought that putting a modern PC architecture into something the size of a power adapter might cause issues.....

Re:What, SheevaPlugs again?

[CAIMLAS]

Yeah, seriously. Enough!

OK, they're cool devices. But they've been around for, what, a year+ now? They promised they'd be coming down to the $50 price range "real soon now"; likewise with newer versions. I'm not seeing them, are you?

Meh. $100, is it? I think I'll pick up oh, any number of low-end components for that price which will still do the job.

$100 with eSATA or two NICs? Then we'll talk. ARM manufacturers really need to get on the ball if they don't want to have their lunch eaten by the Atom z6xx SoCs. No, they won't operate at 5 watts, but they'll be close enough.

Re:What, SheevaPlugs again?

[The Hatchet]

To be fair, I have been a slashdotter for a couple of years now, and this post really inspired me about these. If I ever have anything worth doing this stuff with, or money to do it with, I will most certainly have a dozen or so around.

Re:What, SheevaPlugs again?

[piranha(jpl)]

Guess what? The GuruPlug Server Plus does have dual gigabit Ethernet and eSATA. Unfortunately, it's notorious for overheating.

Re:What, SheevaPlugs again?

[symbolset]

Well they're still interesting for some things. Some people like lighter gear, some heavier. I think for many of the uses this is put Android phones are more interesting these days.

ARM as a controller for a UAV anybody?

Re:What, SheevaPlugs again?

[Christopher Fritz]

Overheating is an understatement. Even if one runs a GuruPlug Server Plus without it overheating to a reboot, it gets too hot to touch at parts.

There will be some kind of mod coming out that supposedly will take care of this, although I can't see what they can come out with except for some heatsink/fan set-up to remove the excess heat/wasted electricity. Hopefully it doesn't become a behemoth with the mod.

If anyone were to ask me if they should consider a GuruPlug or similar product from that company, I'd say a firm "No." As I see it, they have shown a lack of ability in hardware design for a plug computer. Maybe they'll learn from this and will release a product that I don't fear will burn the house down if I leave it plugged in while I'm at work.

Re:What, SheevaPlugs again?

[Skal Tura]

Sometimes it's all about the power consumption.

Here the cost monthly for 5watts is about 0.5eur a month, for a basic atom consuming about 55W it would cost 5.5eur a month, making the atom way more costly as an atom would also cost atleast twice as much and costs 10times as much to operate.
Sometimes it's about the space used, ATOM board alonce is 17x17cm, in a basic mini-itx case probably more like 30x25x10cm size. Quite a bit larger.

If size & power consumption doesn't matter, i'd buy an used Celeron or P4 for 40-60euros.

Erm...Ok

[al3k]

Not that SheevaPlugs aren't cool but....slow news day?

Re:Erm...Ok

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I love Apple products, but I also love Linux.

Occasionally I'd like to see more Linux and less Apple "Slow News Day" twaddle.

Re:Erm...Ok

[The Hatchet]

I love linux. I love windows. I love Unix, I even love MS-Dos. I hate apple products. It isn't that they aren't good, it is that if I wanted to be ass-raped by an elephant with a spiked penis, I would find an elephant with a spiked penis. It would be less painful than overpaying for something by that much. As someone who was/is poor, I detest your rampant waste of money.

Re:Erm...Ok

[cusco]

By all the gods above, below, and non-existent, I wish I could mod you up, but I already posted earlier in the thread. Haven't had mod points for months either . . .

Re:Erm...Ok

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Great, it's a matter of relative value. If I pay 600 bucks for a Core 2 Duo Mini, I'm not going to spec it out similarly to a Windows machine. Yes, the base hardware's cheaper, but, in the UNIX world(Which OSX is :) and linux isn't), hardware's only a single piece of the puzzle. I could probably spec a machine cheaper than HP's going to sell me an HP-UX workstation or server, but, I'm in it for an HPUX machine, not a Windows machine, or other commodity OS(which Linux is; very *good* commodity OS but it's certainly not proprietary). Similarly, yes, you could spec a Windows machine that's faster, but is it better? Is it smaller? Is it still running Windows?

Re:Erm...Ok

[The Hatchet]

Hardware is only part of the story no matter what. Software and OS functionality is always part of the story. I build my rig for 1200 bucks. It has 12 gb of ram in 2 triple channel kits, it has an i7 920, two nvidia GTS250s, and a good cooling system. I can run all industry standard software, and if I need to run software that only runs on mac (practically none) then I can mac it up in a virtual PC. but that need has not arisen, and I doubt it will.

I can play any game I want on it with amazing stability and good security with the proper security software installed, and I can easily render incredibly large and complex renderings in just a few hours. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but to price a similar Apple product, you are talking several thousand dollars for a substitute operating system that doesn't provide any benefits worth the thousands of dollars of increased cost. So is it better? doesn't matter, because quality per dollar is so much lower.

Re:Erm...Ok

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I'm betting it sounds like a jet engine too.

When you factor in labor and other features you probably didn't consider are on the Mac, you're coming out to an even build. This whole myth about the Mac expense is bogus. I could probably build your system for ~$200 less if I opted for AMD and different parts and still make the same claims you make.

It's bogus.

Bogus bogus bogus.

Re:Erm...Ok

[Skal Tura]

Never mind Apple is probably the most evil largish IT company around ...

Re:Erm...Ok

[Skal Tura]

Your argument has some fatal flaws in it.

AMD cannot compete in terms of performance vs. intel, you would need to opt for a Dual CPU system, which is going to cost more.

Secondly, building a computer when you got the parts is not a task taking days, but several hours.

Thirdly, not all home built computers sound like jet engine, infact, some make almost no noises, it depends how you configure it, what parts you opt for, what case you opt for, do you opt for extra noise reduction methods.

What other features on Mac? Maybe one of these:
  - Lousy, unergonomic, unusable mouse with jsut 1 button (vs. commodity mouse with 5 positioned ergonomically)
  - Just about everything is proprietary and thus marked up. Hell they probably don't even use industry standard power cables
  - Lots of excess eyecandy, lowering system responsiveness or at the very minimum consuming more resources thus electricity (mind you i do like W7 Aero and some of the Mac eyecandy)
  - Need for extra licenses to run some standard applications (atleast for professionals), to get some basic functionality, thus costing more
  - Lock-in to Apple products, lock-in like you've never seen before, where almost every action consists of somekind of payment
  - Industry standard hardware, in different casing and huge mark up in price
  - Many applications are just worse or worst to use, making simple tasks an immense hurdle (ie. iTunes+Ipod....)
  - Lack of basic features (Remember Ipod shuffle being a big deal? iPhones lack of some basic, rudimentary cellphone features)

I admit Apple does good on several things tho:
  - Marketing
  - Milking every possible dime out of customers
  - Generating hype for recycled ideas
  - Marketing
  - Design: Devices are pleasing to look at (but White is not very long lasting...)
  - Locking users into their applications
  - Marketing standard devices as something new and distinctive (Ipod still is just a standard MP3 player, Iphone is not that special of an smart phone, a Mac of any version is still just a basic computer)
  - Being evil to raise their profit margin and revenues

Re:Erm...Ok

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I'm saying that your goals are incredibly subjective and that your claims are bogus.

Further more, Apple computers do not require apple mice. You can use any standard mouse out there. They just happen to offer a mouse you don't like. I don't either. I'd rather have a cheap usb laser mouse with a wheel instead of a Magic Mouse, although if I could get multitouch on a usb mouse...

If you think that iTunes and an iPod are a "hurdle" perhaps you aren't as skilled with computers as you say you are.

Re:Erm...Ok

[The Hatchet]

What the hell is wrong with you dude? My system doesn't make much noise at all, and stays very cool. And there is no way in hell you could get an Apple system with my computing power for under 10,000. Hell, you can't even get my system built by dell for under 6,000. And like the message you responded to pretty clearly states, Apple products waste a lot of resources, and ridiculous proprietary parts that can't exactly be easily or cheaply replaced.

There are no benefits to building a mac, unless you consider thousands of dollars cheap for basic labor, or an ugly interface and crappy standard parts.

Re:Erm...Ok

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

What does it benchmark at?

Re:Erm...Ok

[The Hatchet]

I don't bother benchmarking, but it rendered a 250 part system with various degrees of translucency, moving, reflections and shadows with 8x anti-aliasing at 1920 by 1080 with 60 frames per second for 30 seconds in about 35 minutes. My old computer took 10 days to do the first 27 seconds before I had to cancel it, and that had a dual core amd with an ATI radeon 2500 and 2 gb ram. So I would say it is pretty lightning fast. it gets all 5.0s in the windows experience index except for my crappy hard drive, but I could care less about that. Especially at 10% of the apple variant with the ability to run many more programs, I don't know why you are even trying to argue. Seriously, are you that attracted to steve jobs?? Or are you just mentally problemed??

Re:Erm...Ok

[The Hatchet]

10% the price, but 2x the usefulness.

Re:Erm...Ok

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

You're arguing that objectively you're able to pull the same performance out of a machine from Apple that costs quite a bit more. I want to know by what objective standard are you using, and what are the numbers? How do you know that a 12 core Mac Pro can't do that?

I don't care if I can't run as many applications as you, besides, I don't think it's a point to brag about being able to run Windows programs. :)

No, I have a problem with people who think that it's cool to shit all over Apple fans just because they think they can do it better and cheaper. You're not even being clever about it. You're just strutting your e-penis all over this thread and acting like a macho asshole troll.

I just want to know what you're using to back up your claims that you're paying %10 the cost for 2x the functionality?

Re:Erm...Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is wrong with you? The numbers I am using are hardware. A fucking 12 core mac pro will run you a good 7k with no options. For those of us without money coming out our fucking ass, PC is cheaper. I enjoy being able to have a computing system that can do whatever I want, is easy to fix and easy to use, that I can do basically anything I want with, I can peak under the hood without even trying. But a fucking apple, you can't do shit with it, you can't fix it, your can't change it, you can't do anything they don't want you to. And No, I am not saying anything to "Shit" all over apple, i am standing up for equal or near equal quality for ridiculously lower prices. Why the fuck did you even start this argument, so you could flip a shit about how great your bullshit is?? So you could try to stand up for the 'coolness' of your rich kid bullshit and money wasting? I my world you get by with the cheapest shit possible, not shiny bullshit with a price tag inflated like a fucking weather balloon. Get a life you dickless assfucker.

Re:Erm...Ok

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I didn't realize, of course, that we were talking apples and oranges.

That is to say, you can't even *build* a barebones machine with Xeons in it for less than a grand.

Shut the hell up.

SheevaPlug

[codepunk]

SheevaPlug, I don't know about the rest of you but that name brings visions to my mind that has nothing to do with computers.

Re:SheevaPlug

[Maarx]

SheevaPlug, I don't know about the rest of you but that name brings visions to my mind that has nothing to do with computers.

Thanks for ruining my lunch.

Re:SheevaPlug

[Anonymous Coward]

SheevaPlug, I don't know about the rest of you but that name brings visions to my mind that has nothing to do with computers.

With dimensions of 4.3 X 2 inches, you might be right on the money!

Re:SheevaPlug

[Just Some Guy]

Thanks for ruining my lunch.

Why? Were you having a little lamb?

Who paid for this advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who paid for this advertisement?

Re:Who paid for this advertisement?

[91degrees]

Meh. Slashdot's always had a certain amount of time for cool gadgets and gizmos. Not interested? Or think it's a really crappy product? You have a platform to make your case.

HomePlug / Power line ethernet

[Maddog Batty]

Does anybody know of a similar device that includes Homeplug so you can do away with the ethernet connection as well?

Re:HomePlug / Power line ethernet

[marc_the_kiwi]

Someone must've though about it.. surely. Maybe the cost/size would be prohibitive?

Re:HomePlug / Power line ethernet

[Anon E. Muss]

Does anybody know of a similar device that includes Homeplug?

No, unfortunately. There also aren't any plug computers that can run off POE (Power Over Ethernet).

Being small and cheap is a key part of plug computers appeal. There are many technologies that would go well with a plug (e.g. WiFi, Homeplug, POE, USB, ESATA, RS232, RS422, I2C, etc.), but including them all would be size/cost prohibitive. The manufacturers have to make a judgment call about where the "sweet spot" lies. The result is often a "one size fits nobody" situation, where the plug is 90% right for your application, but the missing 10% is a deal killer. Building a custom plug is impractical at low volumes.

P.S. I bought a Shevaplug last year. I had no idea what I'd do with it, but it sounded cool. Honestly, I still don't know what to do with it. Luckily I can afford to blow ~$100.

Re:HomePlug / Power line ethernet

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait... wouldn't a computer that ran off POE actually be smaller, since it wouldn't have the bulky transformer and voltage regulator w/ heatsink?

Re:HomePlug / Power line ethernet

[seanadams.com]

Not really. You still need regulation, and 5-10W AC powered switchers are only a cubic inch or so. And they're produced as modules in such phenomenal volume that they're probably cheaper for this application. A POE supply is not trivial - it still involves a switcher, transformer, optocoupler, and a handful of passives. Basically the same stuff.

Re:HomePlug / Power line ethernet

[Tacvek]

There is no plug computer with POE, but there is one device that comes pretty close. Chip-PC's Jack PC was the size of a wall-wart, but was deigned to be resessed into the wall, and used as a thin client, using POE. It is a rather old product though, and their newer products do not seem to support using POE, which is unfortunate. See http://www.hightech-edge.com/ethernet-wall-socket-pc/626/ for more on this system (including links to the manufacturer).

Re:HomePlug / Power line ethernet

[maotx]

Luckily I can afford to blow ~$100.

I eagerly anticipate a PayPal transaction. Thank you.

Re:HomePlug / Power line ethernet

[radish]

The newer version of the sheeva plug (forget the name) has gig-e, esata, 802.11g and USB - which seems like a decent set of options. The only thing I'd really like is VGA, they have one coming with HDMI.

Re:HomePlug / Power line ethernet

[Anon E. Muss]

I eagerly anticipate a PayPal transaction.

Sorry, I can' do PayPal. However, if you post your checking account and bank routing number, I will arrange an ACH transfer.

Needs a new name

[bsDaemon]

First, I misread this as "linux walmart" and thought it was some sort of "app store" deal. Closer inspection reveals the truth is far more disturbing. They should probably pick a new name... or dress them up like 'Shrek' and market them towards kids or something.

Re:Needs a new name

[zerocool^]

Not only for the lulz, but I seriously just spent about 20 minutes googling around and using amazon/froogle, and because "Wall Wart" and "Plug Computer" are both common phrases for things like - you know - ac adapters, these things are insanely hard to nail down an actual vendor or two in order to purchase one or two or five.

Need a new name like "wall computer" or "power pc".

Maybe not so much that last one.

Re:Needs a new name

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's what someone said the last time this story was published...

(May 22, 2009)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/05/22/1410227/What-to-Do-With-a-99-Wall-Wart-Linux-Server

Am I the only one... (Score:5, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward writes: on Friday May 22 2009, @10:29AM (#28053575)

that thought Wal Mart was selling linux servers?

... and also the time before that...

(February 24, 2009)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/02/24/1918217/100-Linux-Wall-Wart-Now-Available

Did anyone else read this as (Score:5, Funny)
by nebaz (453974) writes: on Tuesday February 24 2009, @03:26PM (#26973715)

$100 Linux Wall-Mart now available? That would be cool.

So thanks for that burst of insight, Kanye. Truly, you are the voice of a generation.

Re:Needs a new name

[Thud457]

compubooger?

Ug. Linux. No thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll wait for Apple to release the iPlug.

Cheap NAS boxes are better

[Anonymous Coward]

Plug computers are widely overrated. For the same price you can get a cheap home oriented NAS box like http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11384 with 1TB of storage that can be reflashed http://lacie.nas-central.org/wiki/Main_Page to do whatever you want.

Re:Cheap NAS boxes are better

[morgan_greywolf]

Not really.

The biggest advantage these have over cheap NAS boxes is bang for the buck in terms of horsepower. The Lacie NAS appliances you mention come with 400 Mhz processors at 16 MB of RAM.

The SheevaPlug and GuruPlug each come with a 512 MB of RAM and 1.2Ghz processor. Also, GuruPlug has 802.11g WiFi capability in addition to the wired Ethernet connectivity.

And I say this as an owner of a reflashed Linksys NAS 200, which not only serves files, but also serves as a print server for my network, a capability that Cisco/Linksys doesn't include in the box.

Re:Cheap NAS boxes are better

[Sancho]

Stay away from Guruplug. They're sold with two gigabit NICs, but if you use them both at gig speeds, the Guruplugs overheat. Heck, mine exhibits the same syptoms (gets very hot and reboots) using one NIC at gig speeds while also maxing out the eSATA connection.

Originally, Globalscale had this to say:
http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=1735.msg12392#msg12392

Now, they say that the plugs aren't designed for this kind of use, and that they will sell "Professional Upgrade Kits" to let you use the devices in this way. Worse, to me, they're essentially rewriting history here. The forum post accurately quotes the original announcement dated 7/17/2010. The page now only shows an announcement 7/5/2010 mentioning what they are "designed" for and about the sale of the upgrade kits.

Frankly, I'm shocked that the units were sold with 2x1Gb NICs, but weren't tested using them and that they're considered "not designed to be used together." It's asinine that they would pull this crap.

Re:Cheap NAS boxes are better

[morgan_greywolf]

That's the GuruPlug Plus. The standard GuruPlug includes only 1 Gb NIC.

The "professional upgrade kits" are just a microfan and a wiring harness. You could just as easily mod the GuruPlug Plus with a 3rd party fan and drilling a few holes in the case, etc.

Or just lock one of the NICs at 100 Mb, as the announcement suggests, if you need 2 NICs and don't need them both to be GigE, as in the case of building a router. Or if you're building an iSCSI target and need the 2 GigE ports for speed by using channel bonding, then just add the fan.

I don't really see the big deal except that I do find Globalscale's announcement change to be a bit deceptive, as the original announcement promised that they would be adding the professional upgrade kit to all future GuruPlug Plus units that started shipping as of August and now they've reneged on that deal and covertly altered the notice.

Re:Cheap NAS boxes are better

[Sancho]

That's the GuruPlug Plus. The standard GuruPlug includes only 1 Gb NIC.

I'm standing by my statement to stay away--actually, from anything they produce. How much testing could they have done if they didn't notice this issue? What's the point of having a "plus" version that upgrades the slower NIC to Gb if you can't use them both together?

I'm not much of a hardware hacker or maker--I'm a software guy. So I'm not really excited about modding it myself with a third-party fan. I'd much rather have the professional upgrade kit--which is 3-4 months away according to the "new" press release. Worse, I'm outside of the return period, so I can't even wash my hands of this and send them back.

I know I'm grousing a lot, but I really see this as highly deceptive. They sell a "plus" version that doesn't work, promise a fix, then sell you a fix long after the return period has elapsed for a big chunk of your customers.

Re:Cheap NAS boxes are better

[morgan_greywolf]

To clarify, the Standard only has 1 NIC, not one 1 Gb NIC + 1 100 MB NIC.

I still wouldn't hold Globalscale's (who is a retailer/distributor for the devices, they are not the device's manufacturer) against the hardware device itself. I'd certainly say that the manufacturer didn't do adequate testing, but do understand that at around $100, these are the cheapest things available with this much horsepower. I know, I've been researching small embedded general-purpose Linux devices for about 3 months now, because I think the GuruPlug would be an ideal candidate for mesh networking.

Re:Cheap NAS boxes are better

[Sancho]

To clarify, the Standard only has 1 NIC, not one 1 Gb NIC + 1 100 MB NIC.

Ah, I misunderstood. I ordered this back in February (or whenever they started taking preorders) and it's been a while since I looked at the specs.

FreeAgent DockStar - $40

[Rick Richardson]

Used to be $30 from amazon or tiger direct last week.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/network_storage/freeagent_dockstar/?cmpid=ppc-_-freeagentdockstar-_-y-_-us-_-seagate_DockStar-_-a&SR=sr3_172862990_yh

Re:FreeAgent DockStar - $40

[redelm]

I got two of these, $25/ea last month from buy.com . One was bricked on boot (cloudengines has an obvious init coding flaw) and replaced on warrentee. Both now work fine (uptime >3 wks) with original distros (supplemented by ubuntu binaries & libs).

3W power draw (with 1 USB flashdrive). USB is the big advantage over openWRT devices along with lower powerdraw (no superfluous wifi).

Two (other) Words

[sarysa]

Security System.

Re:Two (other) Words

[mmcuh]

With infinite programming capabilities for encryption of recordings, offsite backups, and other sexy things you can think of. Hook it up to a small sensor that triggers the recording whenever a door opens and it can get really interesting. Computer, webcam, sensor, all fitting in your jacket pocket to install at home when you go on vacation, in the hotel room when you leave for a day trip, at the office when you leave for the weekend etc.

Re:Two (other) Words

[itzdandy]

that sounds like a job for an arduino/seeeduino or like.

Slightly bigger ARM based machine anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

All I find on the web is just a bit too small for my needs. I want to exchange my work station to a enery-saving, silent and yet powerful ARM-based machine. There are plenty of offers for x86 based ones... Any idea?

cb

Re:Slightly bigger ARM based machine anyone?

[Urban Garlic]

Beagleboards. They are filled with awesome.

Re:Slightly bigger ARM based machine anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I heard of it and I know there is a new board in the line. Are they suitable for the desktop?

cb

Re:Slightly bigger ARM based machine anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's .org - as in beagleboard.org .

Re:Slightly bigger ARM based machine anyone?

[morethanapapercert]

Correct URL:

Beagleboard

Be careful buying Guruplugs from Globalscale

[Zerth]

They're still working out the bugs and they take months to ship(bill your credit card right away though). They said 2-3 months to go for a hardware fix for the Guruplug+'s overheating problem when using GigE, other than "use them at 10/100".

Sheevaplugs have gotten better though, the capacitors don't pop anymore, but both of them benefit from removing the 5v power and putting it in it's own box. Which doesn't entirely defeat the point, but it is a little aggravating. Still, unless you like paying now for flaky hardware from a company that has zero customer support and enjoy resoldering your power supply, buy one of the more commercial ones.

PS, I rather like mine, I'm just lowering your expectations so you might like what you get, if you still buy from Globalscale.

Re:Be careful buying Guruplugs from Globalscale

[Zerth]

Oh, and if you plan to install a different distribution, you NEED the jtag adapter to get a console. It doesn't come with the Guruplug, but one is built in to the Sheevaplug.

Re:Be careful buying Guruplugs from Globalscale

[Sancho]

I ordered several Guruplug+, received them, and have had no end of problems with them. I second your opinion, but I'll go a bit further--I'll never order from Globalscale again. To sell a device with two gigabit NICs, but without the capability to use both is simply false advertising.

Roland Piquipaille rides again !

[Gothmolly]

How is this article not an old-news, dupe, blatant Slashvertisement?

Re:Roland Piquipaille rides again !

[Anonymous Coward]

Roland Piquipaille ... is dead, you insensitive clod!

Don't forget Puppy

[commodore64_love]

From the article:

Linux does the job admirably, with even the most full-featured distro like Debian being able to slot into the flash memory provided you're economical with what you install (scrap Gnome and KDE for starters!). Or Damn Small Linux and other distros of its ilk will do the job just fine too.

They always forget Puppy, which is a heck of a lot easier to use than DSL. Puppy can fit in as little as 32 megabytes with a full desktop even a kid could use.

.....and 512Mb DDR2 RAM.

Woah. I feel like I stepped into the Nintendo and Sega wars. 512 megabits == 64 megabytes in normal human parlance. i.e Twice as much as I have in my old Windows98 laptop and equal to what was in my OS 9 mac.

Re:Don't forget Puppy

[bhima]

I don't think there is an ARM port for puppy. So you'd be setting yourself up for a fair bit of work.

A file server? Really?

[EvanED]

The gigabit Ethernet and on-board USB 2.0 means the device could be a media server, a file server or print server for your network.

Print server I can see; that'd actually be pretty spiffy. But a media server? File server? With 512 MB of flash?

Sure you could add an external drive, but at that point why not just get a laptop or something?

Re:A file server? Really?

[slaxative]

Easy. Mount an nfs share from another box. Bam, more storage space.

Re:A file server? Really?

[vux984]

"Easy. Mount an nfs share from another box. Bam, more storage space."

If I already have another box running, why do I need this walwart PC again then?

Re:A file server? Really?

[jabjoe]

Because if you use a low powered external harddrive (the WD MyPassport, or what ever), it's still less power, less cost, and quieter as there is nothing but the harddrive actually moving (i.e, no fans). But like the laptop and unlike any OpenWRT solutions, it's running a full Linux, ARM Debian/Ubuntu repositories are pretty much the same as the x86 version.

One (Other) Word: ( +1, Helpful )

[Anonymous Coward]

Botnets bitchez.

Yours In Astrakhan,
Kilgore Trout

P.S.: Bush-Gingrich 2012 !

Re:One (Other) Word: ( +1, Helpful )

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Botnets bitchez."

If you read TFA you would know that these devices don't run Windows ;-)

A small business owner's viewpoint

[GMFTatsujin]

I'm in the design phase of opening a consulting business (non-IT related) to run out of my home. Marvell's plugs look very attractive to me as a right-sized server for my modest needs. Email, web, file storage (especially with a RAID NAS or via DropBox) -- the wall wart looks just right for that kind of workload. I've worked in IT with big, fancy servers, and I just don't need them.

The alternative is to lease something like a Linode. I like the way Linode does business, but five months of their low-power service would buy a SheevaPlug. All I'm missing then is a static IP and the always-up cloudiness that Linode provides. The choices are tempting.

Re:A small business owner's viewpoint

[gad_zuki!]

Sheeva plug as a server? Is this a joke? No raid or redundancy and these things are infamous for blowing caps, overheating, and other hardware issues tells me you need to start doing testing before publicly proclaiming your business plan.

Oh and those "big ol fancy servers" no one needs? You're paying for raid, hardware warranty, same/next day parts, dual power supplies, support, proper engineering, etc. If your company came to me with one of those toys as a "solution" you'd be walking out of my office with that sheeva plug shoved in your own "plug."

Re:A small business owner's viewpoint

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course he's a fag. He 'services' the owners of Apple products.

Re:A small business owner's viewpoint

[pspahn]

Meds.

Re:A small business owner's viewpoint

[Anrego]

Totally agree..

Not saying a small business (especially if not IT based) needs an "enterprise" level server.. but running web and email off one of these things sounds very dubious.

Probably better off with a hosted solution.. most ISPs won't let you run a server on a standard plan .. and though you tend to get away with it.. I wouldn't have "hope my ISP ignores this" in my business plan. As soon as you start paying for a business ISP account you may as well pay the excess and get all the redundancy and proper data center perks.

Re:A small business owner's viewpoint

[TeknoHog]

You should be able to do everything on that NAS alone. I run a Gentoo server on a Buffalo Linkstation Live, with the only difference that its Marvell ARM CPU is a little slower and there is a little less RAM, compared to the Sheevaplug.

For my purposes, the Sheevaplug has the problem that any sizeable storage needs its own power supply. Thus it negates all of the size and power consumption arguments. Linkstations and similar devices come with a hard drive or two on the same power supply. If you actually need the CPU at 1.2 GHz and a little more RAM, get a newer Linkstation Pro.

Re:A small business owner's viewpoint

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at PogoPlug and then open it up with PlugApps.
PogoPlug by itself gives you your own personal Cloud (as in accessible anywhere from the net).
PlugApps opens the rest up for your own server hosting, etc.

PlugApps also works with other wall plug systems like this.

http://www.pogoplug.com/home-en.html? -- PogoPlug home
http://www.plugapps.com/index.php5?title=Main_Page --PlugApps home

Re:A small business owner's viewpoint

[GMFTatsujin]

Meds, dude. Take a breath.

Re:A small business owner's viewpoint

[GMFTatsujin]

The NAS I'm running at home has RAID5 and powers down the disks when not in use. It consumes about 15W idle. (Don't recall the model offhand.)

I figured I could map /home to that via SAMBA. It runs Linux underneath it all, but I haven't figured out how to get root on it yet, otherwise I'd try it out as more than a file server.

I'll look into the Linkstation, though. Thanks for the thoughts.

Re:A small business owner's viewpoint

[badboy_tw2002]

Don't bother. Just sent mine back, those things are POS. The community for the ReadyNAS lines is much much better, and its actively encouraged that the servers are used to run additional packages instead of having to "reopen" your box everytime you upgrade the flash. I wish I had known about this before I bought, maybe I can save you some hassle!

Re:A small business owner's viewpoint

[LoRdTAW]

From the tone of your post I can see you already have one shoved up your "plug".

Re:A small business owner's viewpoint

[Anonymous Coward]

No raid or redundancy

I saw the OP mention RAID: "Email, web, file storage (especially with a RAID NAS or via DropBox)"

For small email and web server loads, like a brand-new small business is likely to have, the plug should be fine. Surely the OP will have a reasonable backup policy which is far more important than RAID or redundancy.

Re:A small business owner's viewpoint

[snadrus]

This allows multiple servers better than the proxies (RAID, Dual Power Supplies) act like mainframes. Now anyone can have multiple physical servers for redundancy & load balancing, just like large companies do. Yet few software stacks expand to multiple physical nodes well.

PlugPBX.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on over to PlugPBX.org - we offer a flash image writable to an SD card, you can stick in a SheevaPlug and turn it into a full blown Asterisk PBX.

On our forums several guys are working on adapting this on the DockStar, a lower cost platform as well. Both devices run around 3+ watts of power idle, its very cool stuff!

www.plugpbx.org

these are fun

[digitalsushi]

If you plugged one of these into a serio you couldn't get any closer to analog input/output for your crappy bash scripts :)

Re:Ug. Linux. No thanks.

[Abstrackt]

I'll wait for Apple to release the iPlug.

I swear I saw one of those at a sex shop once.

Wuh oh!

[decipher_saint]

You got wall warts from using a SheevaPlug, you better get some cream for that right away...

Gah, I grossed myself out... pleh!

Re:Wuh oh!

[Anonymous Coward]

You got wall warts from using a SheevaPlug, you better get some cream for that right away...

Burma Shave.

Did it really need 1 page?

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually RTFA because I'm interested in these things... And found it a total waste of time. Let me summarize everything in it:

The small and cheap, low-power computer that you plug directly into the wall is actually a small and cheap, low-power computer. It has USB 2.0 (as can be clearly seen in all pictures of the device). You can install linux on it and do stuff that such a linux computer could obviously be used at: File storage, run FTP server, run apache, use it as SSH gateway... That's about the list of ideas mentioned in TFA.

Did anyone here actually find new information (okay, 3rd page has a bit of technical specs. Nothing unexpected, nothing that would have taken more than 2 minutes to google) or ideas in the article? If so, what were they? If I missed something essential, my bad... But this seems to contain zero information. Especially to someone who already has interest to such devices (obviously, if you've never heard of these "wall warts" ((Okay, I hadn't heard that name being used for these devices before)) before, everything there was new. Though I still believe that running ftp server or ssh gateway would have been about the first things you would have thought of yourself, too).

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[RevRagnarok]

Agreed!

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[skids]

Not to mention half the applications for something of this size are equally well filled by a reflashed OpenWRT wifi access point you can fish out of a dumpster for free. You don't need 512M of flash/ram to run an ssh gateway.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. I spend a lot of time dumpster diving for old routers. No wait, I don't actually do that at all....

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[sorak]

For someone who does not have an interest in such devices, it has little information either.

Yes, it can do any Linux server task, in a way that is slightly more green than repurposing an old pc, and, yes, it is smaller as well.

There's your article. Tack some technical specs on the end.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[tepples]

a reflashed OpenWRT wifi access point you can fish out of a dumpster for free

How? I tried a Google search for how to dumpster dive for access points but it didn't help

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[zmollusc]

Where are these dumpsters? I haven't got anything good out of a skip for literally years, despite rummaging through every one i find.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[SQLGuru]

My best ideas are to pair them with some old LCD screens and do something like this: http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[ncc74656]

Not to mention half the applications for something of this size are equally well filled by a reflashed OpenWRT wifi access point you can fish out of a dumpster for free. You don't need 512M of flash/ram to run an ssh gateway.

I'm kinda wishing I had more than the 16 MB (IIRC) that's in my WRT54GL, though...blocklists implemented as iptables rules need a bit more RAM than that. The model with a couple of GigE ports looks like it'd make a decent router.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[dfghjk]

We also learned that it won't run Windows because it doesn't fit in the flash. I guess the author didn't consider the lack of console and ARM processor. ;)

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[spitzak]

This is probably obvious, but will it run a printer in a way that all other machines in the house (Linux, Win, Mac) can use it? Would like that rather than requiring the computer the printer is plugged into to be on.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[skids]

Well, OK, since there's so much interest: hit a dormitory or college-catering apartment complex dumpster when the kids are moving out for the summer. Thar's gold in them thar hills!

Seriously, though, you folks have a hard time coming by old APs for free? I've accumulated 3 without even trying.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[CronoCloud]

Sigh...you read things MUCH too literally. use as few terms as possible, start as generally as possible. Since you know what a WRT router is, what you really need are good places to dumpster dive for useful electronics in your area, and no, you don't want to google "good places to dumpster dive in tepples location", that's way too many terms. Start with "dumpster diving", find message boards and e-mail lists..then ask THERE.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[tepples]

you read things MUCH too literally

I have been doing this lately because after I had posted "citation needed" in a reply to a comment to another story, GooberToo replied that replies such as "citation needed" or "how so?" or even "what Google keywords should I use to learn more about this topic?" show laziness. I mention the Google keywords as proof that I am asking out of something other than laziness.

Start with "dumpster diving"

I did, but I didn't see any results that I found relevant.

find message boards and e-mail lists..then ask THERE.

As I understand etiquette on Internet message boards, I need to answer other users' questions before asking my own, so that I appear to have at least read the FAQ. Many boards even have a "promotion" system that restricts new users from creating new topics/threads until they have posted at least a specific number of replies to someone else's topics/threads.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[chiangovitch]

Nah, I didn't really learn anything from that article, but I'm not too surprised. But there's still value in it by being a seed to /. to get all the contributed ideas and alternatives you see here.

Most times I read ./ just for the story links and disregard all the idiot responses. But on a story like this I figured I could get some useful pointers from the discussion, and I did.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[LingNoi]

It's not that we have a hard time. It's just that we're not bums that like spending our time rummaging around in other people's garbage/rubbish.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[LingNoi]

If you buy a samsung TV you can simply reflash the firmware, get root and forget about having an extra box attached to it.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[hellop2]

It is possible to get an XP install to be under 512MB.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[Rogerborg]

It's only free if you don't value your time. Or self respect. Or personal hygiene.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[skids]

Actually I lose respect for people when I see them throwing perfectly good things out instead of finding them a new owner, and I gain respect for people when I see them making efficient use of materials, which includes fishing them out of the trash.

So I guess it depends on who's respect you value.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't been trying for years and I still haven't accumulated any!

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[idle12]

What year are you living in? Most companies these days will properly dispose of their electronics. Gone are the days of throw CRTs in the trash. The other day I fixed my grandma's computer and even see said "how do I get rid of this broken modem? They say you are suppose to put electronics in the trash any more" But I agree, you can get old electronics for free, including access points. Just not though dumpsters.

Re:Did it really need 1 page?

[CronoCloud]

I think it depends on where you live, when I read about Slashdotters finding all sorts of stuff in dumpsters or whatnot I think "don't you have electronics recycling/reselling places"? Because around here, no one throws away (or gives away) computing equipment, either they use it till it dies and can't be repaired anymore or they take it to a thrift (for a cut of the sale price), sell it outright to a pawn shop or one of the electronics resellers, or they try to sell their old P4 themselves for a couple hundred dollars.

Probably depends on how affluent the area is, personally, I'd try freecycle first, but considering how the local newspaper office has what appears to be a Graphite G4 tower still in operation, I doubt I would have much luck.

Re:Ug. Linux. No thanks.

[Anaerin]

You're probably thinking of the OhMiBod. Really. OhMiBod. I swear you can't make this stuff up. (And thanks to Engadget for informing me of this particular device's existence, before you ask how I know about it).

What indeed?

[Zouden]

"What can you actually do with them? Plenty, it seems!"

Not really. The article spent 3 pages to say that you could use it as a file server with an external hard drive or... a web server. That's it?

This reads more like a slashvertisement for a product with no real purpose. Yes, it's great that it's cheap and runs linux, but if you need an external hard drive to get any real use out of it, what's the point in making it so small? Just make it the size of a caddy.

Re:What indeed?

[Gnaget]

They really are full fledged computers, with big possibilities. I have spent the last couple of days in the planning stage of a home automation / personal assistant project, and plan to use several guruplug computers to pull it off. Connect a mic and webcam to it, and I should be able to pull off voice and facial recognition in a system that can always be on. I'm glad the guruplug was eventually mentioned, it is the same price as the sheevaplug, but has 2 USB ports instead of 1, an eSATA port, and wifi builtin. The SheevaPlug is grossly underpowered in comparison, but it was the first.

Re:What indeed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's cheaper for us if they don't bundle it. And some people don't need the external hard drive.
Perfect to stash somewhere with open wifi if you need a proxy (i.e. in U.S. to watch hulu).

Re:What indeed?

[EriDay]

Yeah, their developer conference starts tomorrow. Go figure.

Re:What indeed?

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon man we're geeks! If you are having a lapse of imagination, let me help you. If you're like me, you hate putting all your crap into "the cloud" where it could get lost, turned over to authorities, or read without consent. Host your own XMPP server. Host a photo gallery for all your friends. Host your own webmail. Host a blog.

Some of these devices are shipping with ZigBee and Z-Wave which opens up reams of possibilities for home automation.

If you're into HAM radio, it could make a good radio to IP gateway with the right equipment.

If you're into building robots, this could be a very powerful processor for processing things like video input for facial recognition.

Or hell, just let run and see if it can discover a mersenne prime or discover intelligent life.

Only one of these options REALLY necessitates external storage, which can be a 16GB pen drive.

Re:What indeed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, for those of us who already run a fileserver anyway, they make for cheap solutions for those 24/7 clients, I'd say. They'd also be a good way of scaling slave webservers (image serving, etc), just have a half-dozen that cascade over when traffic is high...

Re:What indeed?

[dcherryholmes]

I use my sheevaplug to stream my music and videos with ampache to my phone or remote computers. I do other things with it as well (rtorrent/rtgui, etc), but that's the one I haven't seen anybody mention yet.

Re:What indeed?

[itsdapead]

Yes, it's great that it's cheap and runs linux, but if you need an external hard drive to get any real use out of it, what's the point in making it so small?

The obvious use seems to be apps like Firewall, proxy, SSH/VPN gateway etc. that just need a computer, minimal local storage and ethernet and need to be always on.

Think of using one of these in a product which provided a self-contained appliance to provide a secure tunnel from work into your home broadband connection... Of course, it would be more efficient to hack that functionality into your router/modem and save a plug - but with one of these you could produce a plug-n-drool appliance you could give to Joe Luser without them risking bricking their router (although they'd still have to set up a port-forward).

Or a DHCP server/DNS proxy if (like many) your router only had crippled version of these (stick dnsmasq on there and you've got a useful box).

But I agree - its a fairly narrow range of apps that don't require plugging in an external device via the (only) USB port - at which point these lose their all-in-one appeal and a NAS box with space for a drive and more connectivity options becomes a more sensible option. Even on a firewall, having more than one ethernet port, for example, would be useful.

They might also make sense if you had a USB-powered peripheral - but then so many things like webcams are now available with built-in ethernet, so why do you need "local" processing?

A "proper" mini server - which can still be low power - may cost more, but with decent storage and better connectivity it can do so much more (file serving, email server, spam filtering, web/database sever).

What the world really needs is a Mac Mini without the Apple premium - but then, they can charge that because there isn't anything comparable around off-the-shelf (please don't point me at something three times the size from Dell or something from Asus with half the power and compulsory MS Windows).

What a waste of time

[PingXao]

TFA is a 3-page waste of electrons. Linux runs well on very small, low-power single-board computers, often no bigger than your cellphone charger! The End

They call those ideas?

[proxima]

The article mentions internet router, file storage, and print server. Really? That's the best you can do?

A decent dd-wrt compatible router is pretty inexpensive, and will give you a few port switch and a decent set of wireless antennas. Most people aren't so constrained on space that they can't tuck one away somewhere. They often include the capability of handling USB hard drives as well for file or print sharing. Many printers these days have built in ethernet or wireless to handle their own print serving capability.

Devices of this size do have possibilities, but the article doesn't mention anything really interesting. Apple has had its airport express base station for a while, and while it's mostly an ordinary wireless N router, it does provide music sharing via airtunes which works well if you happen to use the Apple/iTunes ecosystem for music.

So what do you do with a tiny Linux box? mpd or a squeezebox client would provide music sharing (though you can get Logitech's own radio for $100-$150, and it comes complete with a screen and controls). It would either need a good quality sound chip on it (unlikely) or a decent USB sound card (added expense, though).

What would be really neat is if they had an HDMI port for a thin client. Maybe an install of Android and its browser to turn a smaller LCD monitor into a little internet browsing box in otherwise cramped spaces (e.g. kitchen). Or have something powered off 12V and use it as the basis for a car computer.

Even with the current offerings, I'm sure there are much more interesting ideas that people could come up with (probably involving more significant hacking) than a file or print server.

Re:They call those ideas?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was my first thought when I read this article, "My router already does this."

My router also only cost me $20 at a computer show.

Re:They call those ideas?

[Jeff Carr]

Kitchen PC is the best use that I can see for it. Hook up a 7" usb touchscreen monitor, and use it to browse recipes online in the ki.

Re:They call those ideas?

[Fjandr]

You've got a router that has 512MB of flash and 512MB RAM for $20? Almost all consumer-grade routers choke on anything more than the most non-demanding tasks. Hell, a good portion of them choke if you actually try to run full-speed traffic on all of their ports in more than small bursts.

Re:They call those ideas?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Guruplug Display has an HDMI port. I've heard from forums that the Guruplugs have cooling problems so I've never bought one.

Re:They call those ideas?

[jabjoe]

If you had looked at all, you would see there is already a version with a HDMI port and WiFi + BlueTooth, the GuruPlug. Also you can use a usb-hub, usb-vga adaptor, usb keyboard + mouse, with the standard SheevaPlug and you have a low power desktop. There are videos of exactly this on YouTube. It's a low power ARM computer that you can install Linux on (or Plan9/BSD/what ever, if you are insane). How you use it is up to you. Pretty much all the software in the x86 repository is in the ARM repository. OpenWRT/dd-wrt are great, but they aren't Debian/Ubuntu. I also have a router I have OpenWRT on, and while it's great, it can't be put to work like the SheevaPlug can. I've even heard of people using Tvheadend on the SheevaPlug to turn it into headless PVR. The SheevaPlug is acturally more powerful then the 12 year old craptop we use as almost a thin client for the desktop.

Re:They call those ideas?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had looked at all, you would see there is already a version with a HDMI port and WiFi + BlueTooth, the GuruPlug

Okay, but that's not what the article talked about.

Re:They call those ideas?

[Skal Tura]

worse even, most of them choke if you try to use your internet connection at max speed, especially if NAT is enabled.
All cheap ones i've seen choke easily when reaching their "rated maximum", both ADSL and ADSL2+

It's so fun having a 24mbps connection when you can't utilize more than half of it without loosing connection due to router crash/overheating or severe lag or amount of dropped packets when it can't handle the traffic.

Or a cheap router . . .

[Rob the Bold]

Plug computers are widely overrated. For the same price you can get a cheap home oriented NAS box like http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11384 with 1TB of storage that can be reflashed http://lacie.nas-central.org/wiki/Main_Page to do whatever you want.

If you don't need the storage as much as you need the always-on/low power processing, you can get a WRT54-based router that can be relfashed with Tomato or DD-WRT, then you can install optware. The Asus WL-500G has enough guts to run Asterisk while still doing its primary purpose. Or maybe a cvs, svn or other repository. All for maybe half the price of the Sheevaplug. And much more available. Of course, it doesn't have the wall wart form factor, for good or bad. And it's not quite as discreet, if that's a requirement.

Re:Or a cheap router . . .

[CAIMLAS]

You could also get an ALIX board... they're comparable in cost and offer a lot more networking functionality; they're x86 boards and have much more processor and RAM than anything near the WRT54 stuff. They'll run a small to medium network's gateway device (running pfSense) with several VPNs, even - no problem.

Short on possibilities, For now.

[marc_the_kiwi]

Seriously, Sheevaplug/similar plug again? Yes, you can do some things with these. File server, Asterix stuff. Brilliant. Come back to me when there are more than just content serving applications. Seriously, someone plug something interesting into this. Is it just me or are these dying for use in home automation?

Re:Short on possibilities, For now.

[cptnapalm]

"Is it just me or are these dying for use in home automation?"

Unfortunately, yes it is just you. As I've read, they're actually dying for cooling.

Can we count?

[qoncept]

Can we count the reasons this article sucks?

Of course, you can even run your own web site using Apache on a plug computer.

Great. Now my website is dependent on my internet connection and power. Geeks that want this so bad that they'll do it even though its completely pointless have a PC already running that could do this job much better.

or run a site to monitor other sites!

Yeah. More often than not, if your site is reported as "down," it's probably your wall wart. Nevermind the fact that, again, this might as well be running on your already-running PC.

could be a media server, a file server or print server for your network.

Fair enough, but there already a number of cheaper dedicated options for these, that most likely use less power and work better.

DropBox ... set up a wall wart and USB hard drive as your own private FTP server, accessible from any location.

Really?! It's idiots like this that think they get it, but never create anything even slightly user friendly and useful like DropBox. To compare the two is to completely miss the point of DropBox.

Re:Can we count?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we count the reasons this article sucks?

I read your comment, and you didn't count! So apparently, no, you can't.

Of course, you can even run your own web site using Apache on a plug computer.

Great. Now my website is dependent on my internet connection and power. Geeks that want this so bad that they'll do it even though its completely pointless have a PC already running that could do this job much better.

I know geeks are very fond of putting a web server on pretty much everything. Some people even put it on their NAS. This device would be a much better fit than that. And it's easier to make sure a tiny PC is powered, than a large one.

or run a site to monitor other sites!

Yeah. More often than not, if your site is reported as "down," it's probably your wall wart. Nevermind the fact that, again, this might as well be running on your already-running PC.

It's supposed to monitor your site from different locations, say at your friend's house. If the location is down, then the message won't reach you, because it's down. But if it sends you a down-message, and you do get it, it's probably down (or some weird outage in your city).

could be a media server, a file server or print server for your network.

Fair enough, but there already a number of cheaper dedicated options for these, that most likely use less power and work better.

Where do you get a NAS with gigabit for less than $100 (running Linux)?

Re:Can we count?

[cynyr]

Actually if i had a low power NAS, and an SSD in my desktop, I would likely be shutting down my desktop a lot more. A lot of the stuff i run, i could run on a 1GHz or slower ARM. lighttpd for serving files, and samba/nfs, proftpd, sshd, mediatomb, lvm + DM raid, cups, etc.

It will get worse the next time i upgrade and am no longer using a 65W cpu, and a geforce 8600GT. I hear Athlon x6's and gtx480's are hungry.

Re:Can we count?

[qoncept]

Where do you get a NAS with gigabit for less than $100 (running Linux)?

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices

Re:Ug. Linux. No thanks.

[pspahn]

Already done.

They're great at parties

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, these things are great at parties. I usually carry one in my pocket and if I detect an open wireless network then I plug it into an obscure electrical outlet. You can do some VERY interesting things long after the party's over... :-)

USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't you easily expand the storage by attaching a usb micro sd card reader with a 8gb+ size card? Can it boot from USB?

Less useful than initially expected.

[bored]

I own a few of these devices. My first one has a eSATA port that I connected to a 5 bay sata port expander. That has been my network DHCP/DDNS/fileserver/printspooler/VPN endpoint/etc for a while now. The problem is that its hard to justify when compared with the recent firewall/wireless devices that have USB ports for exactly this reason. Sure I can get ~60MB/sec, absolutely outrunning anything attached via USB, but it cost about 3x as much to get there compared with just purchasing a $70 netgear and plugging in a dual drive USB raid array.

Plus, these things _REQUIRE_ hacking to get them to do a lot of stuff. I wasted days of my life trying to figure out why the JTAG interfaces didn't work as documented, or trying to boot kernels that didn't come with the devices. Or even consistently boot off USB instead of internal flash. This would be fine, except they are hardly open devices. Much of the time wasted turns out to be endless reverse engineering closed portions of the device. Marvell publishes a fair amount of the documentation for them, but I quickly found, time and time again, that the information I needed wasn't available.

So, In the end, for low level stuff things. The AVR butterfly an similar devices are far better hacking platforms, and on the higher end its hard to ignore the atom nettops or dozens of very nice single board computers that are far more powerful for not much more money.

Re:Less useful than initially expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a sheeva plug ($100) (running ubuntu) connected to 2 ($115x2) Iomega Prestige 1.5 TB USB in RAID0 on EXT4 via Belkin USB 2.0 4-Port Ultra Mini Hub ($7) in the home office
on the room i got a Western Digital WD TV ($100) which connects wireless to the sheeva plug on the office via 2 Linksys WRT54GL ($60x2)
this 2 routers are connected as WDS nodes so i have coverage all around the house, pretty close to $560 the setup but they are pretty low on energy consumption

use wtorrent to download torrents and files can be accessed via samba from the computers or wdtv

Re:Less useful than initially expected.

[jabjoe]

They don't require hacking, it's optional. Unless you count sshing into a Ubuntu box to configure it as hacking...... I moved mine from Ubuntu to Debian, and the guide for doing so is pretty clear: http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/ I had a small issue, probably of my own making, but I solved it and learnt more about uBoot in the process. I don't what problems you had with the mini USB JTAG, again it's clearly documented. It is much much much more powerful then the 8bit AVR butterfly. A much better hack project to point people at is BeagleBoard (which now can run XBMC).

Re:Less useful than initially expected.

[bored]

They don't require hacking, it's optional. Unless you count sshing into a Ubuntu box to configure it as hacking.

If you look at the bug lists and things people are complaining about you will see a far different picture. There are regular issues with doing simple things like booting from SD, much less more complex things. Sure, you might have been able to take one of the prebuilt distributions for the plug and replace the default OS, but it doesn't take long to hit real problems. As I stated in my original posting i'm running a 5 bay port expander. Getting that thing working required patching the marvell sata drivers because their drivers are incorrectly clamping the port count on the sata port expander. Then the standard linux tools for spinning down inactive hard drives in the array didn't work (the marvell driver again), requiring more hacking. For me, just about everything I tried required some custom patch, probably 50% of the software running on my network server I ended up compiling/patching myself.

If you search the forums you will see a wide range of problems people are having with the JTAG ports and openOCD. I could list a dozen other major issues I had to fix with assorted versions of the devices (the openRD is the worst).

It is much much much more powerful then the 8bit AVR butterfly.

Maybe, I wasn't clear by "low level" I meant any kind of low level hardware interfacing. Sure the ARM's kick the crap out of the AVR, but these plug computers have a dearth of actual accessible IO pins. If you want to wire up something to an A/D or D/A, or bit bang a couple of parallel pins its hard to beat those little $20 butterflys and Arduinos. The beagleboard is a nice board (and is an excellent choice for some stuff), but it falls in the significantly more expensive category. I find that a wireless or USB interface attached to one of the smaller devices and a nettop or small PC to often be a far better proposition. The butterfly basically acts as a smart peripheral for the larger platform. Plus, those smaller devices can run for many months on a small battery, which allows them to be put into all kinds of places where feeding power isn't convenient. The sleep modes (another thing poorly documented on the kirkwoods) on the AVR basically allow them to sleep with basically 0 power draw, waking up on some interval or external event just long enough to process it and go back to sleep (think remote sensing). The list goes on..

As I stated in my original posting, the plug computers, are hard to justify when compared with a number of less expensive nearly as functional (if not more so) wireless routers. I might expand that to include network RAID or media center boxes. They aren't really hacker friendly enough (not enough documentation or easy to access hardware interfaces) nor are they user friendly enough for simple stuff like running a firewall, NAS, or web server.

Re:Less useful than initially expected.

[Skal Tura]

wtorrent is quite crappy gui for rTorrent, try ruTorrent. Much nicer and easier to use. Resembles uTorrent like the name suggests.

small or big

[kaoshin]

I think we need to stop making small things and make everything really big. Then when aliens come to destroy us they will be like.. omg everything is gigantic, lets get outta here!

Here's an idea

[gman003]

Buy a couple dozen of them. Hook them up to the cheapest router that will handle that many. Set them up with Yafray or similar. Instant, low-power render farm. Might not be high-performance, but I bet the frames per watt are better than most.

Or set one of them up as a Quake server. Old-school FTW.

Re:Here's an idea

[hufman]

I have a Sheevaplug, and the problem I've encountered is the lack of hardware FPU. The article even recommends using them as an SSH server, and from my experience, it makes a poor fit in that role. You can SSH into it decently fast, but the lack of a hardware math unit adds around 5-10 seconds of delay when sshing from it to another computer. Your renderfarm idea would fail miserably, since 3D rendering is all about math, especially with angles and other floating-point usages. Maaaybe I could see a Quake server. Depending on how much math the server has to do.

Re:Here's an idea

[gman003]

Ah, forgot ARM doesn't have a built-in FPU as standard. Which would make almost any game server too slow anyways. Actually, it would make almost anything slow.

Is there a reason for no FPU? Is it some extreme power-saving measure?

Re:Here's an idea

[hufman]

It's not even saving much power. It runs at about 5W, while my new Gumstix runs at 0.5W and comes with OpenGL and an FPU. I honestly have no idea why they left out something so standard these days.

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

No FPU.

Re:Here's an idea

[ciggieposeur]

You can SSH into it decently fast, but the lack of a hardware math unit adds around 5-10 seconds of delay when sshing from it to another computer.

I have never experienced this - my Sheevaplug (1st gen maybe?) has 1/2 second or less response time ssh'ing outbound (similar to all of my other desktops). Is it really SSH or maybe DNS that is the issue?

Cool, but can they keep up with HD & USB 2.0?

[rsilvergun]

I'd love to replace my old server with one of these, but I wonder if they can keep up. I've seen ones with USB for use as file servers, but I haven't read good things about the first gen hardware...

Licencing perhaps

[CdBee]

I don't think the patent regime for HomePlug is that friendly, judging by the few suppliers and high price/performance ratio

Switch off some lights!

[by (1706743)]

If there's some simple GPIO/parallel/etc. interface (could always rig up something USB based...), it'd be great for controlling lights and other appliances via SMS, IRC, etc.

Agree: AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID!!!!

[jddj]

Yeah, I'm still waiting on my "Early June" delivery of a GuruPlug+ from an order in May. It's spec'ed great. Too bad you can only use the Gigabit Ethernet at 10/100.

They think they're going to sell me a "professional upgrade kit" to make it meet the spec they advertized when they billed my card. Bullshit.

So let's say you want to do something you need to rely on: home music server, 24/7 monitoring applications, security. If you haven't laid in a spare, are you going to wait over 3 months for a replacement when it breaks. N.B.:WHEN it breaks.

Run far and fast from GlobalScale!

Why expend so much effort to piss a customer off at your company? Couldn't they have just put up an order page that said "Fsck You, Customer!"?

Re:Agree: AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID!!!!

[zero0ne]

So where SHOULD we be going to get similar functionality?

Re:Agree: AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID!!!!

[jddj]

Well, you could go to /dev/null for the functionality they've delivered for me so far.

Your question implies that similar functionality (in the sense of a product that's purchasable, not vapor and that will work as advertised) is actually available somewhere else.

I believe there's a British firm that markets the same hardware, that actually gives a crap about the customer, but unfortunately you're not going to get two working GBEN ports from them either - it's the same device.

No idea where to tell you to turn.

UL approval (pending) - bleah

[Animats]

Something like that has industrial embedded applications, but they need to get past "UL approval - pending" and a peak external operating temp of 104F. You don't want something that's marginal on temp specs in an application where it's controlling something. They talk about putting them side by side on an outlet strip, but that's going to make the cooling problem tougher. Fanless devices should not push the temperature ratings of the components. That never ends well.

Solidly reliable little compute bricks have their uses, but many of the low-end ones tend to be flaky. The industrial ones that really work are expensive, because they're produced in low quantity.

Too expensive

[frist]

$99 + $35 S&H seems high for what it is.

availablility of some models, specs of others abse

[drwho]

nt. Guruplug and sheevaplug have availability problems. Pogoplug seems to be barely existant, with no technical data on their web page and nothing that indicates it is linux-friendly or hacker-friendly. This 'plug-computer' industry needs to mature in order to replace the mini-servers I am using.

Pogoplug Multimedia Sharing Device - $48 shipped

[Rick Richardson]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0033WSDR4/ref=nosim/?tag=fatwalletcom&linkCode=as1

Re:Ug. Linux. No thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to sell the OhMiBod. Well, we tried to sell it. It was not picked up very often. People did not buy it. I one time found a video for it on a UK site. It was in the Apple silhouette type of ad from years ago. Can't find the vid right now, sorry.

***Linux*** Wall Warts (was: Wall warts?)

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Turns out that it's only used in reference to AC adapters ...

So your claim is that the industry uses the term "Linux Wall Warts" to refer to Power Adapters? I think you are missing the concept of context.

What most of them are really are used for

[Locke2005]

Plug in the USB cable that came with your phone and use it to charge up your phone.

1 page readability

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not use Safari.

Selling my SheevaPlugs

[Andrew Ford]

I have had 4 SheevaPlugs. Two died on me, one was replaced and the other I had to buy a replacement PSU. They are touted as plugging into a wall socket, but if you do that they are pretty precarious, and if you plug them in via a power cable, then they don't stack nicely. I prefer the PC Engines Alix boards (http://pcengines.ch/alix.htm) - based on the AMD Georde with 255MB of memory they seem to be as fast as a SheevaPlug (I read somewhere that the Kirkwood processor only has a 16-bit data bus whereas the Geode has a 32-bit data bus). The Alix systems have a nice Aluminium case and run cool and sweetly - a German company nrg-systems.de, sells cases that will take a 2.5" hard disk, which draws an extra 2 Watts above the 8-10 Watts that the base system uses. I have 3 Alix systems: one as my firewall, one running my Asterisk PBX and the other running Exim, Dovecot, NFS, Samba, etc. The three systems together draw less than 30 Watts, replacing a pair of 150 Watt tower systems that ran 24x7 saving enough on my electricity bill to pay for themselves in just over a year.

Using these now

[jimmyswimmy]

I'm using these devices now for R&D work. We started with the Sheeva plug, now the Guru plug. The devices are okay. If you are looking for a COTS general purpose computer, the price, size and capability cannot be beaten. If you have more specific needs, particularly consumer needs where you can give up size as a constraint, there are many other cheaper alternatives.

That said, if you open up one of these devices, the thickness of the "wall wart" is half power supply, and a lot of the space is allocated to thermal design (heat sink, space for airflow). If you don't need their (crappy) power supply, replace it with a 5 V DC-DC converter and you can run it in your car or in your custom R&D device like we are. Very few low cost (small, low power) GigE devices exist now. These are just about the only ones. Downside is that there is NO support (oh, I'm sorry, "community support"... not okay for corporate use). You have to go it alone if you want to do something that nobody else has done.

Globalscale (makers of the Sheeva/Guru plugs) are supposed to be releasing a GuruPlug "Display" device which has an HDMI port. It sounds cool, but based on my experiences buying the "Server" version on spec, wait until it is not just vaporware. They said that the "Server" version would include some things that aren't actually pinned out (so if you want, say, an I2C interface, you have to be prepared to go digging around on the circuit board, then you might have to deal with building a custom kernel, then you might have to pray on your knees before the dark god of fab, etc.).

And forget about using this as a portable device. Power draw is low but it still sucks down the juice if you're using it do actually do anything. And the ARM5 core does not, as I recall, support floating point operations, so they're emulated (at reduced speed). And last but not least you're going to be cross-compiling everything, or hooking up a hard drive so you can install a precompiled gcc and making less-common things from source.

All in all, are these show-stoppers? No. I'm still using a few of these for various jobs, like one which is going to go get pelted around in the ocean, and they're great if you can withstand the negatives. I have $200 worth of batteries to run it and a custom kernel build (and a separate board for the I2C interface, thanks a lot you jerks at Globalscale)... took a while to get going but it mostly does the job.

Re:Using these now

[spikeb]

why would you cross-compile anything that debian has a package for? ;)

Re:Using these now

[ciggieposeur]

like one which is going to go get pelted around in the ocean

Interesting. I worked on the Texas Automated Buoy System when we moved from custom boards to PC/104-based Linux systems. Are you allowed to say more about this project?

Re:Using these now

[evilviper]

Pre-build binary packages invariably either have EVERY possible dependency built-in, requiring 200MBytes of unrelated software you don't want, be installed, or almost as bad, are occasionally configured with next to no options, eliminating the dependency problem, but quite possibly also leaving out the ONE extra option you need.

GP made it clear he's a developer, no doubt compiling his own software, and making changes to 3rd party software before compiling and installing it.

Great! If They Worked

[onholder]

We've got two. Development environment is unusable. Tech support is unavailable. Place an order and it takes at least 4 weeks or more to get the devices. Lots of postings on their forums concerning unit failures and overheating. Great idea, poor implementation. Marvel has not done well with this one, which is a shame.

Pogo Plug

[fast turtle]

and it's not even a decent article. No I didn't RTFA

Why No Mention Of Over-Heating Problems?

[tunapez]

Earlier this year I did some pre-purchase checking and found these little warts get very hot and die prematurely. If this wasn't yet another slashvertisement, they would have addressed if this little nit has been remedied.

Video Out

[no1home]

I'd be happiest if they had video out. As I see these, I could replace all of the public PCs at my work with these and run terminal/remote desktop sessions from the server. I just need these to have video, mouse, keyboard connections for the idea to pan out. We're headed this route anyway, so this type of setup removes more of the power waste and space usage than other thin-client systems we're looking at.

Re:Video Out

[TheSync]

I'd be happiest if they had video out.

You can get a Mini2440 with a VGA out card.

Re:Video Out

[no1home]

Cool! I'll have to check this out in more depth- looks fun. Thank you.

good grief you gnurds can be densa!

[Anonymous Coward]

theese computars, they are so tinee! they are no bigger than a common AC powah addaptah commonly reefered to as a "wall wart". WHAAAAATTTT?!


where, oh where, is that fish?

Four words

[Anonymous Coward]

Drink. Feck. Arse. Girls.

B vs. b

[hierophanta]

in their spec sheet they go back and forth from B and b - if their documentation is at this level, well my advice is stay away

I just thank god it was not another iPhone article

[Kludge]

At least you can do more with a Sheevaplug than an iphone, and this is supposed to be a site for hacker types.

Re:I just thank god it was not another iPhone arti

[martin-boundary]

Now, if they could only change the adapter slightly so that it can draw current directly from people, I predict a bright future for our welcome plug overlords!

Sheevaplug Dmesg

[TheSync]

Here is a shot of a SheevaPlug dmesg screenshot.

I also have a Mini2440, which is a bit easier to access its GPIO, serial port, etc.

But SheevaPlug ships with Python, which is awesome!

Re:Ug. Linux. No thanks.

[niftydude]

Well why wouldn't you? When apple releases their version in 5 or 6 years time it will be ground-breaking new hardware in a form factor that no-one has ever imagined before...

News and sports

[tepples]

for analog, I still get all of the expanded basic channels

Then you must happen to live in an area serviced by a company other than Comcast. Comcast, which services my home town of Fort Wayne, Indiana, is converting everything but the local channels to encrypted digital.

and for special shows, well, that's what DVD's are for

Daily political commentary and live sports don't work well on DVD. Only MSNBC and ESPN stop my family from dropping Comcast TV and switching to Netflix.

Headless nethworked mpd client

[Roobles]

I would be really interested in a plug computer with decent audio output. All it would need is a minimal Linux OS with Pulseaudio installed and an open network sink configured. It would allow me to define it as an output in my central mpd server and toggle attached speakers on and off with a mpd client. I've already done this with desktops, but I would love to have speakers and a tiny computer in every major room, so I can just decide what room(s) I want to be playing music in at any given moment.

Power consumption monitoring

[fyngyrz]

In conjunction with some powered USB hubs, some cheap A/D->USB devices ($50 per 8 channels), and some hacked-together AC current probes, a power monitoring system for every line into your breaker box.

Re:Power consumption monitoring

[OnceWas]

Very interesting. Care to elaborate?

Re:Power consumption monitoring

[fyngyrz]

It's just an idea I have, was thinking of using it in conjunction with my PD meter generation python library to snoop on what's happening in my house. I have almost eighty, 20-amp circuits, plus a few 50's; be interesting to have a way to watch them, end up with a big panel like this one (different project, but you can see how the meters are multi-use, etc.)

Given drivers for the A/d units, Apache, and python - all that needs to be done is build a bunch of current sensors, and that looks to be easy, if somewhat tedious.

Re:Power consumption monitoring

[Doug Neal]

I have almost eighty, 20-amp circuits, plus a few 50's

On a domestic power supply? WTF are you doing with all that power?!

Re:Power consumption monitoring

[fyngyrz]

Nah, it's not what you think. I wired the building myself (it used to be a church, so it was basically an empty box when we bought it), and what I like to do is run one breaker, via one heavy line, to one outlet, lighting system or utility. I use multiple sub-boxes like this one to route power to everything, plus there is a generator and a set of special lines for stuff that I don't want to lose power - like the furnace, our food refrigeration, and our fish tanks. The way it works out is that the total load is low, but the capacity at any one point is high. The 50's are in the obvious places: central air, electric range, one in the shop, one for the home theater, that sort of thing.

This way, first, every outlet is capable of a full load if I want to plug a table saw or an air compressor, for instance, into a kitchen outlet. Even the GFA outlets are 20 amp. You never have to worry about the toaster being on plus the pizza oven blowing a breaker, either; each box has a calculated power budget for what's assigned to it, plus a decent margin. There's a benefit in terms of almost no star connections / wire nuts in internal wall boxes, either, because every line just goes from the breaker to the destination. There are a few exceptions; if ceiling lamps for a room consist of more than one fixture, then yes, I had to break the line, and also, light switches do it, but overall the building has a lot of wire and comparatively few splices and connections. That's worth some peace of mind to me.

From a monitoring point of view, since everything has its own line, if I watch them, I'll be able to spot anything unusual fairly easily, because (for instance) the toaster load never appears on the kitchen island line, and the stereo, fishtanks, etc. all have their own dedicated lines. That's also part of why I did it, but I've yet to implement the monitoring. Been kind of hoping to find some inexpensive commercial AC current sensors so I don't have to make them by hand, but so far, they're pretty dear. I'm in no rush, though -- lots more to do, this whole "build a house interior yourself" thing turned out to be a bit of a challenge. We're re-doing all the old gnarly casement windows in double-paned stained glass right now and want to have that done before it gets too cold for window sealants to set properly, and then... well, there's plenty more work where that came from. :)

No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

No storage, so it's no good as a server. "You idiot, just use NAS for storage." Um, no. Run your services on the box that contains the disks. If it can run nfsd, it can run anythingd.

No audio or video out, so it's not a good terminal, mythfrontend or whatever.

Only one network interface so it doesn't even make a good firewall.

Applications: ???

There's too little here. Expand it in one of three directions and it becomes a useful box, but as is, no thanks.

Let me fix that for you

[Sloppy]

And get only local channels. Everything else needs bittorrent.

Requiring cablecard == telling (ex) customers "fuck off, we don't want your money."

Re:Let me fix that for you

[mattack2]

Do you say the same thing about a cable *box*? CableCards are good, or at least better than the alternative -- since we can have OUR OWN devices (with better UIs) tune all of the channels.. including the current 4 tuner Ceton card for use with Windows Media Center.

Re:Let me fix that for you

[tepples]

And get only local channels. Everything else needs bittorrent.

Since when have the publishers of shows available on cable TV been using BitTorrent? And since when does BitTorrent work for live sports or live news?

Requiring cablecard == telling (ex) customers "fuck off, we don't want your money."

Comcast, FiOS, DirecTV, and DISH all need access cards. What should people switch to?

Re:Let me fix that for you

[LingNoi]

Since when have the publishers of shows available on cable TV been using BitTorrent? And since when does BitTorrent work for live sports or live news?

Let me introduce you to GoalBit. Not only a bit Torrent based streaming application however they also have a service available for TV networks to publish their content to customers while minimizing distribution costs.

Re:Let me fix that for you

[tepples]

Interesting. Let me know when the basic cable channels start offering GoalBit or other streams to the public instead of supplementing ad revenue with carriage fees from cable television system operators. Even ESPN3, which offers a streaming feed, geolocates the viewer's IP address to make sure that the viewer's ISP has paid for ESPN3.

Re:Let me fix that for you

[Sloppy]

Comcast, FiOS, DirecTV, and DISH all need access cards.

I don't consider any of those to be relevant comparisons. The benchmark for the basic level of functionality is analog cable. Remember the words "cable ready?" Remember when you could plug the cable into anything -- a TV, a Tivo Series 1, a PCI tuner card -- and it Just Worked? I sure do. I paid Comcast literally thousands of dollars for that over the course of many years. It was a proven business model, and it's the reason that Comcast didn't close their doors decades ago.

Apparently some bean counter looked at all that money reliably coming in, month after month, year after year, and decided, "We need to do something about this. Can we use the switch to digital as some sort of excuse to get paying customers to go away?"

What should people switch to?

Piracy, until they offer the basic level of functionality that we've come to expect. I didn't pirate before, and I won't pirate after. I can't believe you asked that, because it's such an easy question. You can even verify that's it's probably the best answer, by the usual tools of ethics.

"What if everyone pirated TV until the basic level of service we expect were offered?" Answer: a service that Just Works would appear. You'd plug your cable into the back of your TV or HDHomeRun or whatever, and there are the TV shows that you paid for, hassle-free.

"What if not enough people pirate TV until the basic level of service we expect is offered?" Answer: the TV companies will never get serious and professional. People will continue paying for something that would have made everyone laugh with derision just ten years ago.

It's pretty obvious that it's the best thing for everyone to do.

There are plenty of amateurs out there who are willing to go through the inconvenience of repairing content to make it Just-Works-Ready, but I think the situation is not quite ideal. If a professional organization were to offer that, and use a better distribution tech than bittorrent (imagine some kind of multicast technology which could be received by some sort of standardized "tuner") it would flourish. How much would I pay for

• works with any device without needless resolution loss
• time-shiftable
• no legal risks
• no missing a few episodes of The Daily Show last week because some amateur took a break
• vastly improved performance (bittorrent works, but it also kind of sucks)

as well as other conveniences, feeding right into my MythTV? Shit, I'd pay $50/month for that. And I can prove it: I did it for many years (except with a Tivo1 instead of Myth), as did millions of other people. We all know this works. Comcast could crush their pirate competitors in a heartbeat if they just put their mind to it, and they wouldn't even have to underbid them. Until then, though, piracy is the only game in town. Nobody else offers it at any price.

I'm not saying it would be free of consequences to the TV delivery company. Whatever TV company is able to come out with Just-Works service first, is going to have the same problem that cable companies had in times past: income. The poor bastards are going to have to hire accountants to keep track of all the money, pay more taxes, etc. It won't be easy, but that's the price of having stockholders. I know some cable exec is muttering, "fucking stockholders, all they want is a growing base of paying customers. Why can't they leave us alone?" to which I respond: Nobody held a gun to your head and said you had to work at a for-profit business. If money repels you so much, you can always join the Peace Corps.

And since when does BitTorrent work for live sports or live news?

(I get live news from over-the-air local channels, but I guess that's not universal.) Bittorrent won't get you those things right now, and yet it is The Way to eventually get them. Anyone who wants live news and sports to come back, is going to have to take a long-term strategic view. Pirate today, working realtime TV tomorrow.

Re:Let me fix that for you

[Sloppy]

Do you say the same thing about a cable *box*?

Of course. The last time I looked at the offerings, its outputs were either resolution-reduced firewire (2010 and you can only output 640x480?!?), or some kind of broken HDMI output that only (new) TVs can read (which isn't useful for time-shifting). And they require IR blasting for control. (Are you serious?!! 2010 and you don't have ethernet or even USB?!)

Cable boxes have problems, to such an extent that they're a joke. When they fix the problems, everything changes. Cable boxes, whenever they get the kinks out, could be an acceptable solution assuming (and this is dubious) there's any reason to continue to use nonstandard protocols on the cables upstream from them.

we can have OUR OWN devices (with better UIs) tune all of the channels

Oh! I have those: My HDHomeRun, and the TV itself. These things can decode ATSC and QAM. What's funny, is that the cable companies don't work with these established standards. They've got some kind of problem. When they fix it, everything changes.

Re:Let me fix that for you

[tepples]

Remember the words "cable ready?"

The days of "cable ready" led to the days of widespread theft of services. So when Comcast switched most of expanded basic cable TV from analog to digital in order to free up spectrum for DOCSIS 3 Internet, it went with CableCARD instead of clear QAM in order to eliminate signal theft.

"Can we use the switch to digital as some sort of excuse to get paying customers to go away?"

More like "Can we use the switch to digital as some sort of excuse to get non-paying non-customers to go away?"

What if everyone pirated TV until the basic level of service we expect were offered?

The sequel to the War On Drugs. Watch millions of multi-thousand-dollar pre-trial settlement letters flow through the Postal Service.

Nobody else offers it at any price.

Of course there's a price: half the market capitalization of DIS, GE, NWSA, SNE, TWX, and VIA.B. So by "not at any price", you meant "not at any price that individual customers can afford".

Re:Let me fix that for you

[tepples]

What's funny, is that the cable companies don't work with these established standards. They've got some kind of problem.

The problem is that the cable companies can get sweeter deals on carriage fees from the networks if the cable companies switch from clear QAM to encrypted QAM.

Really?

[Bad Mamba Jamba]

I've been doing all kinds of research for some small Ethernet/WiFi connected boards for a couple of simple home projects. Mainly home automation and monitoring type things. These Linux wall warts are cool and all but for cheap and simple projects you're still paying too much.

If you're really trying to go off the ranch and do something cheap, tiny, and simple I gotta tell you Arduino boards are by far the most versatile and cost effective solution I've found. There are libraries for simple web servers and all kinds of stuff.

Downside is may have to wire up your own hardware and you're not writing anything terribly complex with the limited CPU and lack of real OS support. But honestly if I need that kind of oomph for Linux on a network project I'd buy a WRT54G or something and use that. Hardware is loads cheaper and probably 10x more reliable.

Networking Printer

[gd2shoe]

You could do that, yes. You could also save most of your money by buying a slightly more expensive networking printer. It depends on what else you want the server to do for you.

Re:Networking Printer

[cusco]

I've been waiting for someone to write about playing with some of the print/fax/copier servers out there, but no one has. They have some really unsuspected abilities (huge hard drives, Samba, hidden network shares, editable web site, modem capability, and admin passwords provided by the manufacturer), but I've never had access to one to play with. The only ones I've touched would have cost my job if I'd done anything but the most cursory of configuration.

Re:Or a cheap handheld

[White Flame]

My N800 only draws 5W max at the plug. IIRC my "ancient" Jornada 720 does as well. I've been planning to repurpose my N800 as an always-on wireless server once I get a replacement handheld. You can get last-gen handhelds in a similar price range as these plug computers.

Great, now as for USEFUL possibilities

[Anonymous Coward]

I like hacking and playing with stuff as much as the next person. I had a Sun JavaStation, a Cobalt Qube, an AppleTV, and lots of other stuff I hacked to do things it wasn't supposed to, but there's always a "but." Like this thing, it could drive an external USB LCD Display, but... there are probably no drivers.

I realize these devices are made specifically for hacking, and there are lots of things you /could/ do with them. Like yeah, I could put SSH on there - that's great. But then I SSH in, and...and what? I mean shit I have full size powerful servers I can SSH into and use, but nothing in particular I need them to do. The little "wall wart" thing doesn't have enough power or space to do that much useful other than be on in the first place. And FTP? Ok, it's a file server. How much space does it have? Without a hard drive it doesn't have much reason to exist. With a hard drive, it's the same thing as mu KuroBox NAS.

  If you have an application that requires an always on low power computer, these are great, but such an application could be equally powered by many such small devices. The only real difference here is that these ones are "blessed" for hacking.

I am not trying to diss their product here, just wondering what it will *actually* be useful for.

Re:Ug. Linux. No thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this instead
AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes
it does some of the things that the Sheeva can do.
My Wall plug currently has all my media on an external USB drive, serves movies to my PS3 via Mediatomb and sounds to my Logitech Boombox. Aside from that it MySql running, a version of Apache 2 web server and a torrent client. It is small, robust, always on and connected to t'internet. There are many more things I want to do but do not have the time.
My only issue is that my Vista laptop take so long to discover the network drives that I have mapped to my Sheeva.
Love it!

Sorta defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

[OmniGeek]

I've read a few postings elsewhere complaining of poor thermal design, iffy build quality, and not-so-great software support (something about having to JTAG the beast to get it to run a software load), so this seems quite plausible. If you do away with the wall-wart form factor by extracting the power supply, you're in the same functional class as lots of other single-board systems (such as my current favorite, the BeagleBoard), many of which have quite mature software support and very decent I/O and expansion capabilities, for comparable cost. While I admit that the wall-wart idea is very appealing, I don't think it's quite there yet (which is rather a pity).

Don't trust GlobalScale technologies!

[supersat]

GlobalScale Technologies manufactures the SheevaPlug and GuruPlug development kits. Unfortunately, they totally botched the thermal design of the product, leading it to overheat and spontaneously reboot, making it useless for a server or access point.

They finally admitted that they messed up and promised to offer a fix for free. One month later, that promise disappeared from their news page.

Attention GlobalScale Technologies: You can't just pretend that you didn't post that. Either offer the kit for free, post a plausible update to the situation, or be prepared for chargebacks for selling a device that clearly can't meet its specs.

A plug for a plug

[codeButcher]

... or am I mistaken???

Home automation (domotics)

[Anonymous Coward]

As a low-power computer, it can be on 24/24h 7/7d, that's what you want for home automation.
The problem would be to:
- find devices you can control throught a computer (switch, sensor, ...)
- find open specs for those devices
For lights, and other simple electric devices (on/off), it should be easy. But for electric shutters?
I know http://www.domogik.org/ but there are probably others.

Sounds and Wifi?

[Skapare]

I'm looking for a small computer like that that includes sounds and wifi, so I can free up a netbook I currently have dedicated to a special function (capturing sound on a microphone input and relaying it over to my server).

Re:Ug. Linux. No thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

ummmm Airport Express?

OK, the general purpose doodad, but spot on for form factor.

I just wish that it'd work as a basic WiFiEthernet bridge without futzing about with the main AP & WDS. Simple AE connects to base station as normal, and provides full connectivity from its Ethernet port.

I think the Plugcomputer.org is a good start

[bmullan]

I've been using several Plug computers from globalscale: http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-22-sheevaplug-dev-kit-us.aspx
They've been fairly amazing in what you can do with them. For linux users they are quick and easy to setup.
Mine came with Ubuntu preinstalled so logging in and updating or adding new software from the Ubuntu repositories was simple.
The geek in me took 3 of these, added 3-500G mini-USB drives, and a couple other little low cost gems of technology called Open-Mesh wireless see: https://www.open-mesh.com/store/categories.php?category=Lowest%252dCost-Mesh

• 3 My Open-Mesh boxes cost..... $45 each
• 3 Plug computers were.............. $100 each
• 3 Mini USB 500G drives were.... $110 each
• Total ~$750.00

I made one of the plugs my apache server, another the Samba storage and the 3rd for various uses including Ubuntu Desktop I could log into and manage everything from a GUI. I have all my music/video's in my house coming through these now.
It all fit in a large shoe-box. Total cost was Less than $750. Total power consumption: Less than 35 watts.
The Open-Mesh is managed via a browser and uses Google Map to show/diagram/locate your Open-Mesh network (if it was ever dispersed over a larger area ... like a shopping center etc) and it will send you sms and/or email if there is ever a network problem such as congestion, an open-mesh goes offline or down etc
It actually works pretty well. But it showed me how much possibility these little devices have.

Eben Moglen loves SheevaPlugs :-)

[jabjoe]

http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2010/debconf10/low/1252_How_We_Can_Be_the_Silver_Lining_of_the_Cloud.ogv

nes/mame

[Reed Solomon]

So if you get one with HDMI output and bluetooth/USB seems like it'd perhaps make a decent tiny computer for classic video game emulators.

Re:Ug. Linux. No thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they put the iPlug next to the iPad, it will start to look like the feminine hygiene aisle at the grocery store. The cramp pills can be called iPain, except they are really some kind of webcam that you swallow, then retrieve from the toilet a little bit later. Apple wouldn't sell ordinary pain pills.

New use ideas

[foregather]

How about distributing all of our social network and other currently centralized services ala: the Freedom Box idea?

Alternately, replacing your router with something powerful enough to also run a Tor node, as mentioned earlier in the comments, or an Asterix server, or all of that together, would be a nice use.

Mobile education in Uganda

[WML MUNSON]

Here in Uganda an organization called UConnect puts things like the RACHEL open-courseware repository on them for use in up-country solar-powered computer-lab installations. They also have a mobile-education truck which, when deployed, has RACHEL + 8 Edubuntu thin-client workstations + a WiFi hot-spot powered by GPRS/Squid.

Here's a video which shows one of the recent school installations: http://linux.or.ug/node/501
Here's some photos of the truck: http://linux.or.ug/node/518#586

Re:Mobile education in Uganda

[WML MUNSON]

Just FYI -- we use Aleutia's for everything I described above.
http://www.aleutia.com/

Ughh, power cords please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wall warts? These annoying things take up far too much space on the socket or surge protector (usually blocking more than one socket). Can't we have these things offset by a power cord like laptop power supplies use?